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Originally Posted by dgatwood
Just to pick nits:
Actually, all of those word processors store all of their content in XML format at this point (at least for new Word files, and for every version of Pages ever). What I think you mean is that their XML isn't semantic, and is vastly too complicated to convert sanely to EPUB or other publishing-related XML dialects without throwing a lot of information away.
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Well...if the "nit" is that yes, Word + Pages
can export XML...sure.
They CAN. But the XML is godawful. I thought, when I said that they [the programs] didn't have "remotely decent XML export" capabilities, that my intent was clear. If not, thank you for making it so. (FWIW: I spent some time looking at exporting Word-->XML-->DocBook, and after much tinkering, tweaking, yadda, decided that it was more effort than it was worth. After all, the clients don't give two s***s if we're using that or the Magic Voodoo Insta-book-maker; they just want books that they can upload at [insert retailer name here]. Worse, most of the inquirers will just out and tell me that they don't CARE if we code them by hand; if Bob down the street is making them for half the price by slapping them into Calibre, well, that's all good, as far as they're concerned.
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FYI, I author my fiction books in DocBook now. But then, I'm a programmer, and I wrote my own tools to translate that into EPUB (and PDF via LaTeX), so I'm the exception that proves the rule. 
Maybe if I can fix a couple of the remaining crasher bugs in WebKit's HTML editing, I might make my XML editor available to the general public, but right now, it crashes way too often. Still, it makes writing XML a lot easier than vi.
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Well, then, you're just the man to make the OP happy. Make your editor, and make a reader, and Bob's yer uncle. He'll be happy; you'll <maybe> be happy, and you can't ask for more than that.
I would say, for the average bear, you'd need a frontend like Word, etc., that does the XML lifting behind the scenes. And right THERE is the problem that I see. How do you, invisibly, make the WYSIWYG component of an XML editor, that the AVERAGE AUTHOR will not find a giant PITA? They want to type, hit enter, type some more, hit enter--you know this. So, given that most refuse to learn to use Styles (yes, agreed, it's cutting off their own noses to spite their faces), how could you get them to stop and identify the element of every paragraph? And how could you make it so they wouldn't need to do that? Pattern recognition, or by-the-page-type usage, or..? Just saying.
BTW: For what it's worth,
sure--I think that if someone wants to work in Markdown, or TXT, or...that using XML actually makes sense. IF you are writing in it...not going back over it afterwords and recoding everything from <p class="dedication"> to <dedication>, etc. Just like HTML (Word), if you do the work upfront, the backend is far, far easier. As a commercial formatter, though--and I know you know this part all too well, also--as my friend in the Islands would say, brah, we never get books that have all that upfront stuff done! ;-) From my perspective, I'm the streetcleaner, sweeping along behind the authorial elephant, so I have to look at what is going to generate the least amount of sweeping for me and mine.
Hitch