[Tex2002ans]

While I was catching up on this entire thread, I just couldn't help but burst into laughter.

I use an addon called Stylish + a style which overrides CSS:



I have no idea what Hitch is talking about. BOLD RED text? I don't see any of that.

If I was using this great new Sarmat89 format, my reader styles would be just like my Stylish (Black background, white text EVERYTHING)! Hitch says "BOLD RED", but it looks like white text to me.

Note #1: Just this simple example of the reader overriding the display makes me think of how something like a coding book, where the visual display (Syntax Highlighting) vastly helps the understanding of the text.

Or when explaining a highly complex equation, I might highlight different colors for different parts of equations. Heck, I do it all the time with Regex when I highlight different portions in different colors. Then I can break it down and explain what each part is.

I can't rely on the READER to set the proper colors/Syntax Highlighting. And it is currently a pain in the neck to read a book like that in some of these Android Readers that completely override the "Publisher Defaults".

Or imagine how children's books would be handled! My gods!

But no no, children's books and complex equations and coding books are just the meaningless "5% of books" that don't matter to this ultimate book format.

Note #2: Also, creating all of these individual tags for things (<copyright>, <epigraph>, [...]). These things would rarely be used, or not used properly at all.

As Hitch mentioned, there is just so much crap out there, and people don't even use/tag it properly NOW. It will be completely ignored (such as almost all that metadata in the DC Core or all those fancy tags in DocBook), or you will get a massive amount of garbage input (such as the people who can't use Styles properly in their documents).

I always like to think back to some of the rarely used HTML tags:

<q>
<abbr>

While fantastic ideas, their usage in practice is... let's just say barely anybody takes the time to mark up their documents properly. While it would be fantastic if they were, the reality is, people type (and nearly all the programs output) this:

<p>This is an example of a quote: “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally,” she is coming here ASAP. I wanted her to “jump” over the “ship”, but she couldn’t.</p>

instead of:

<p>This is an example of a quote: <q>Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally,</q> she is coming here <abbr title="As Soon As Possible">ASAP</abbr>. I wanted her to <q>jump</q> over the <q>ship</q>, but she couldn’t.</p>

Which brings up another point: Does the comma belong inside the <q> or outside?

Different languages + Style Guides might handle the little comma such as this completely differently. Would this be left up to the reader's choice as well? I mean, if the text was properly marked up, the reader could flip flop between their preferred Style Guide, or one of the Style Guides for their given language? (Do you pulled this from the book's metadata? Or overridden by the user's/device's settings? Or leave it up to the programmer of the reading program?)

The reader wants the book as the Chicago Manual of Style? They'll get it! They know better than the Author/Editor/Publisher!

Or with the <q> tag, what about cases where there is an opening quote but not a closing quote? Such as the case where a character in a fiction book has a long dialogue:

<p>“Example of the character talking for a very long time. And he is saying a lot of gibberish.</p>

<p>“And he continues his speech into a second very long line of dialogue.</p>

<p>“And then he finally finishes talking.”</p>

How would you handle this case? Well, I know what I would do. Avoid the usage of <q>!

Note #3: Even with simple things such as <ul> + <ol>, people don't mark up properly:

4. I did this.
5. I then did this.
6. I then jumped over the moon.

instead of:

1. I did this.
2. I then did this.
3. I then jumped over the moon.

Or in some cases, we are forced into hardcoding it because of device bugs (and we all know how timely these millions of reader devices get updating and fix their bugs... right guys? RIGHT?).

So us as the Authors/Publishers could follow all the rules, but because of some shitty real-life implementations, you have to do a workaround. Sure, the standard says it should work... but in reality, you have to use the damn hammer to it because the stupid buggy device is too ingrained and will never be updated to display properly!

Bugs lead to horrible input? Horrible input leads to bugs?

Or maybe tools to create the given format make it easier to write bad input? (Word does a great job of tricking people into using Direct Formatting).

Back to READERS controlling the display. What if the reader prefers Roman Numeral numbering of lists? They override the text. But in the text of the book, the author references "#6" in the list. The reader gets confused, because the text does not match the way his user-defined list displays. In this case, would you say the Publisher/Author knows how to display the data better than the reader?

Side Note: Did you get my joke with those lists?