Quote:
Originally Posted by kfarmer
But let's be serious. Applications exist to benefit the end-user. Without a user, an application has little reason to exist beyond academic experimentation (itself a fine past-time, but hardly worth advertising as a product). What I described was a widely used -- consider multi-format editors in general -- means to maximize the potential benefit to users, while buffering against the types of changes seen in the real world.
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Yes but an open source application has a more complex user base than a commercial one. While the so called "average end users" may far outnumber "developer end users" for the long term success of an open source project it has to appeal to both constituencies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kfarmer
Standards make sense for externals, and on that we can agree. But internals can (should) be using whatever gives them the advantage. What I was describing was the internals -- what the OP spoke of as what the application would "think in". You're focussing (apprently) on externals, and nothing I've suggested prevents the architecture so described from emitting pure, clean epub if it wanted. But pure, clean epub is just as much a lock-in as any other model developed by any third party.
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No the OP is talking about what file format to use as a master format. What that means is his program will accept input in a number of formats, convert to the master format, edit the master format, save it for later re-edit and output to a number of other formats from the master format on-demand. That means that only the master format will contain the full representation of all information about the document. That can only be considered an internal format if he intends never to let anybody else write code to process it. And that means that end users will be locked into his app.