can you see the future?

[Bowerbird at aol.com]

wander said:

>    Heh, you make this rise of light markup 

>    sound like some kind of conquest... 


it _is_ a "conquest"...         :+)

and you would appreciate why i take that stance
if you knew how many _years_ i spent in a war
with some technocrats over at project gutenberg.

they wanted to bog down that magnificent library
with heavy-markup.   their conflicts were whether
it should be t.e.i. or docbook or x.m.l. or .xhtml.

the only thing on which they could _agree_ was that 
i was crazy (and a troll) for advocating light-markup.

so i had to battle against a big pack of technocrats,
with no reluctance on their decision to turn vicious.

of course their campaign was ridiculous on its face.
even the academics who invented t.e.i. will tell you
right out that it's extremely complex, even for them,
so there's no way the volunteers at project gutenberg
were going to master its intricacies and make it work.

but technocrats -- like all other kinds of bureaucrats --
are full-blown idiots intent on bullying with their power,
so these asswipes adamantly refused to see the obvious.

thus i had to spent many years wiping their noses in it.

so, yeah, for me, it _is_ a battle.   has been, and will be.

at least until there is a big groundswell of people asking
"why do i have to convert my light-markup into .html? --
why doesn't the web-browser just do that automatically?"

when _that_ happens, it'll be the coup de grace for all of
the technocrats mucking up the simplicity of our future...

and then i can take off my suit of armor...           ;+)

***


>    Marked (looked at it, but decided it's too expensive)


dude!   it's $2.99!

***


>    I don't get your stance on PDF, though, bowerbird. 


.pdf is fine -- as an _output_ format.   if you like it, great.

as an _archival_ format, however, it stinks like a skunk...



>    It's my format of choice for keeping documents that 

>    have a layout I   spent time on. PDF does that pretty well. 


well, yes, .pdf does _that_ pretty well.   right up until you
decide you want to _change_ or _rearrange_ that layout...

then -- if you don't have the original file, meaning you must
repurpose the text inside the .pdf -- you're plumb outta luck.
which is precisely why .pdf is _not_ a good archival format...

***

fletcher said:

>    I am thinking about releasing this as an app on the Mac App Store. 

>    Because of that, I won't be pushing any more updates to 

>    the github repo, but I also won't take down what's already there.


i can see you not wanting to give away the code...

but since you were getting under 50 downloads,
i'd think you'd still wanna share the compiled app.

maybe you feel like you need the money, though...

(the question: "what do you call a programmer
without a girlfriend?" -- the answer: "homeless".)

just so you all know, though, i've got my own app,
and mine will be cost-free...   i've been waiting for
y'all to move your own circle forward a little more
before i released my app, but i guess it's time now.

perhaps you don't think of z.m.l. as your competition
(why would you?), but i still thought i should tell you...

-bowerbird
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