ninja bob, when all you want to do is unwrap the hard line-breaks, try this:
>
http://z-m-l.com/unwrap.pl
it works, for the most part, except it _also_ unwraps tables, poetry, and
other things which should _not_ be unwrapped. this is because of one of
the _biggest_ problems with the project gutenberg e-texts, namely that
these lines which should not be unwrapped are not unequivocally marked.
so one of the changes that i make when i convert a p.g. e-text to z.m.l. is to
_detect_ these lines, and then _mark_ them by giving them a leading space.
later, my unwrapping routines for z.m.l. _respect_ a leading space in a line
as a signal that that line should not be unwrapped. mission accomplished...
this is just one example of one change that needs to be done to a p.g. e-text
in order to make it more functional. z.m.l. as a whole is a _collection_ of
_all_ of those changes my focused research has deemed to be necessary.
some people will tell you a _human_ has to go through the e-text to "decide"
which lines should be marked as immune from rewrapping, that the decision
takes human intelligence, and cannot be programmed into a computer. well,
i won't tell you that my routines never make any mistakes, because they do.
but i _can_ inform you that they make _most_ of the decisions correctly, and
that's because i worked, and worked some more, then worked even _more_,
so that they _would_ make most of the decisions correctly.
so one part of the better functionality my z.m.l. mirror will give developers
will be the ability to unwrap the text at will, without introducing problems...
-bowerbird