Quote:
Originally Posted by GERGE
Actually, there is some merit in what he said, but not in that way. Plaintext is always evolving, as hard as that is to understand if you don't already know I what I mean =)
The answers are in markup languages. Digital books are in html right now, which is a markup language too, but unreadable and capable of so much more. What digital books need is a humane markup language, like reStructuredText (which is my favorite) or Markdown (which is the universal favorite). If I knew that it would be accepted, I would have created a humane markup language for ebooks, but I know it won't be right now.
But I think future is with them. You can write, read and display easily. You can even define formatting at the beginning of the file, which would make it ridiculously easy to edit.
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As discussed extensively in the aforementioned thread. These posts must've been written with you in mind
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=102
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=103
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=104
The purpose of language is to communicate -- it's why we have agreed-upon languages.
Clearly, we agree that plaintext (*.txt) is a bad idea. What I don't understand, Professor Clarity, is why you word it as though you are disagreeing with me.
Again, as discussed extensively in the aforementioned thread, it doesn't really aid the discussion at hand, to point out that Markup Is Plain Text Too -- when I was responding to someone who dislikes EPUB because it is based on HTML, and HTML apparently has structure which limits you from formatting it as you please.
Apparently what the world really needs is a return to the 1980s -- computers these days just aren't flexible enough to provide user choice.