[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

That's demagogy, as any system is expected to give better results than what we have now: a text field.

You'll have to think up better insults than "text field". Your proposition also utilizes text fields.
(Named text fields. But our text fields are already named, you just want to give them different names and mark them as mandatory.)

Now you are getting inconsistent: first you tell about people who need special formatting and '400+ images', now you are telling about 'people uploading Word files'.
It does not matter whether they are using converters or ask third parties to format books for them: in any case results achieved by a specialized format will give better results than a badly made EPUB and still better results with a proper EPUB.

Well, her point is that both groups exist.
And you are targeting the Word-users, I think -- the ones who don't put care into the books.
But your format doesn't stop them doing stupid things (and in short order someone will probably write a program that automatically turns a badly-formatted DOCX into a badly-formatted file in your "specialized format").

You have repeatedly made the assertion that your proposed format is better, but you have not backed up your assertion with evidence.

...

Also, on behalf of EPUB, I take offense at your claim that EPUB isn't a specialized format.

Why would they do that, again, when there is a convenient and understandable form to do that properly?

Because they don't give a damn?
If they don't give a damn about doing a good job now, why would they give a damn if it was more convenient?
As Hitch said:

Originally Posted by Hitch

My company has, in the last seven years, formatted and converted more than 3,000 books. I believe that gives me some standing to address that statement.

And I can tell you in absolutely no uncertain terms that publishers do not give two craps about metadata. For every book we've done, since about mid-2009, I've handed out our metadata sheet, to be completed by the Publisher and returned to us for inclusion in their books.

Now, ask me exactly how many have come back finished? How many have come back, at all? How many have come back with naught more than "title, name, and year of copyright" completed?

The answers to those questions are--about 20%; about 30%; nearly 70% never return the metadata sheet at all, and of the 30% that are returned to us for inclusion, most are simply the title, name of the author, and year of copyright. Period.

I think that is pretty damn convenient of Hitch, but somehow despite being convenient, she rarely gets it filled out...

Are you truly arguing with extensive, professional experience in the exact scenario you are raising?