Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Formatting can significantly change the meaning of a sentence. Eg, consider:
"I think it's a good idea, but you don't agree."
compared to:
"I think it's a good idea, but you don't agree."
The italics totally alter the stress and the significance of the sentence.
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Harry, I understand what you're saying, but I still save all of my books as plain text files (as well as mobi and sometimes epub). My reasoning is that plain text with no tags or anything else, is much more likely to be able to be read easily far into the future than anything else. I was cleaning out an old desk at my father-in-law's house the other day, and I found a CD simply labelled "Stuff" I looked at it, and there were lots of very very old files on there. The newest were Microsoft Works documents. The oldest were very old WordStar files. These files had been moved from computer to computer and media format to media format since the early 1980s. All of them were able to be opened using notepad, and once I removed the extraneous header info and formatting tags (I assume that's what they were, at least) I could read them very easily. I'm sure that they were very nicely formatted, but unfortunately, since I didn't have the original program, I couldn't see any of it...I could only see the text. I know how to strip the extra stuff so that I can see just the plain text--my children and grandchildren may not. I want them to be able to open my books and read them--if there is some formatting missing, they will still be able to read the words. I know that html is nothing more than text with extra tags added to it, but if I open an html file in a text editor and show it to my mother, she won't be able to read it easily. I also know that there is a very good chance that html capable applications will be around for a very long time to come, BUT...I also know that, back in the day, everyone thought that Lotus 123 and WordStar would be around (and be used regularly) for a very long time.
For a shortened version...I keep things in plain text as a backup of my backup, as well as keeping them in their original format. I KNOW that the plain text will be able to be read easily, without having to do any tweaking to see the words.
Shari