MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - A simple tagged text format with an HTML converter

Turtle91 · 04-28-2015, 12:20 PM

I'm pretty sure this has been tried before. You may wish to look over at Project Gutenberg and see if that would help you out.

They started as a text-only storage of public domain books from around the world. It was required to submit books in text - as that was the format to last through the generations, as you argue. However, it quickly became apparent that they needed to allow some mark-up to identify some formatting; Italics, Bold, block indents, headers, to name a few. so they came up with their "tags" *Bold*, _Italic_ ===headers===, etc.

Then the argument said...why don't we allow HTML? A clean HTML document is exactly the same thing but it could be read on many different computers: <b>Bold</b>. <i>Italic</i>, <h1>Headers</h1>

Then the eBook industry said...well, lets make a standard format that can be read by anyone and we will base it on very clean, very simple HTML....and ePub was born.

I honestly don't think creating a New/different markup style will help the industry - or readers for that matter - at all. I do wish you luck however. I have been known to write programs that do all sorts of things that no one else seems to appreciate as much as I do!

Cheers!

04-28-2015, 12:20 PM	#2
Turtle91 A Hairy Wizard Posts: 3,361 Karma: 20212223 Join Date: Dec 2012 Location: Charleston, SC today Device: iPhone 15/11/X/6/iPad 1,2,Air & Air Pro/Surface Pro/Kindle PW & Fire	I'm pretty sure this has been tried before. You may wish to look over at Project Gutenberg and see if that would help you out. They started as a text-only storage of public domain books from around the world. It was required to submit books in text - as that was the format to last through the generations, as you argue. However, it quickly became apparent that they needed to allow some mark-up to identify some formatting; Italics, Bold, block indents, headers, to name a few. so they came up with their "tags" Bold, _Italic_ ===headers===, etc. Then the argument said...why don't we allow HTML? A *clean* HTML document is exactly the same thing but it could be read on many different computers: <b>Bold</b>. <i>Italic</i>, <h1>Headers</h1> Then the eBook industry said...well, lets make a standard format that can be read by anyone and we will base it on very clean, very simple HTML....and ePub was born. I honestly don't think creating a New/different markup style will help the industry - or readers for that matter - at all. I do wish you luck however. I have been known to write programs that do all sorts of things that no one else seems to appreciate as much as I do! Cheers!