Revised - Revised 2005 proposal for meta-data

[Jacob Rus]

Michel Fortin wrote:

>> Wait, he does?  That seems like a somewhat bad idea, likely to  

>> break all sorts of existing uses.  How is someone supposed to 

>> write [sic], for example? 

> 

> Well [sic] would not produce anything special if there's no link  

> reference called "sic" to create a link with. Copy this email on the  

> [dingus] to see.


Yes, I do understand that.  But I'm not trying to make the point that 
anything that was previously possible is no longer possible, but rather 
that this change creates confusion without any appreciable benefit.  I 
have two arguments against it.  The first is if such a form is used:

1. As soon as a word is used as a link, it's no longer possible to use 
that word surrounded by brackets.  Now this may not come up too many 
times, but when it does, it'll be a pain for the author.

Jelks Cabaniss wrote:
 > Jacob Rus wrote:
 > You can still use the extra `[]`s if you prefer.  The "new system" as
 > you call it is not a replacement, it's an alias.  Author's choice.

2. Yes, that's true, of course, but there's another reason to not want 
this change.  It makes the document less readable, as I said before.  If 
someone else writes [foo], particularly if it's something like according 
to CNN, "[George Bush] invaded [Iraq]", the reader now can't tell if 
this is an editorial addition to the quotation, or whether it's a link. 
  A reader needs to look down all the way to the end of the article, 
which may be hundreds of pages long, in order to determine which it is.

And I don't think there's

Of course, I don't really care all that much.  If John has decided that 
such a change will go through, then

Cheers,
Jacob