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i'm not sure why you seem to be taking it so _personally_, jon.
and i think you're missing _both_ the humor and the serious point.
i won't bother explaining the humor, because, you know,
if you have to explain it, then it ain't gonna work anyway...
the _serious_ point, though, is that self-expression matters.
if i see this as a form of self-expression, i am gonna do it...
and i'm not gonna compromise that because you want me to.
and the _flip_ side of this serious point is that it can be irritating
to a reader when their reading experience is constrained in ways
that they do not like. whether that constraint is produced by
an author, or a publisher, or a file-format, or any other way,
the end-result is reader irritation. and the lesson in all of that
is that digital text needs to be structured in such a fashion that
the _reader_ is in control of their own reading experience...
but we also need to understand that there's always going to be
a creative tension between the artist who wants to control the
experience of their creation, and the audience who receives it...
does the artist run a risk of losing the audience by insisting
the audience experience the creation as the artist intends it?
well, most definitely! the audience might leave! and so be it!
that act actively represents the fact that art is a relationship!
if people want to stop reading my posts, or turn them into
a big blotch of whitespace with the "ignore" command, fine!
i accept that as the risk that i run, with my self-expression...
do i _want_ to irritate people? well, heck no! but do i want to
buckle down into conformance to what _they_ want me to be?
well, heck no!
(and, as i sidenote, do i wonder why it's such a big deal? yes!)
you might want to construe this as a simple "wordwrap" policy,
but there are philosophical issues right underneath the surface.
philosophical issues that have _everything_ to do with e-books.
-bowerbird
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