a blade of grass cracks the sidewalk

[David Chambers]

Nice one, bowerbird.

I have one suggestion, which is that the textarea should use a monospace
font so that, for example, table columns are aligned.

David


On 20 April 2012 17:44, <Bowerbird at aol.com> wrote:


> alan said:

> >   Congrats on shipping a nice dingus, Bowerbird.

>

> i'm hoping someone with design chops takes pity on me,

> and contributes something that looks significantly better.

> but at base, it's just a 2-pane tool, so that's what matters.

>

>

>

> >   It does indeed look like

> >   an extremely clean and powerful syntax.

>

> that's what i was aiming at, yes.  easy to understand,

> as a naive user, and easy to handle, as a programmer.

> delivering great functionality while remaining simple.

>

>

>

> >   What causes the entire first page to be in bold?

> >   Convention?

>

> mostly convention, yes.

>

> the target is books, so the first section/page is defined as

> the cover/title-page, which is traditionally centered bold.

>

> but where there is a lot of text, such as on the example,

> bold may be overkill, so that's something i might change.

>

> i've been closely examining books for several decades now,

> so i have a very firm idea about what my starting place is...

> but i'm also quite flexible to the ways authors and readers

> want to shape e-books to fulfill their destiny, which means

> i am going to be quite attentive to the feedback they give...

>

> i don't anticipate that _a_lot_ will change, but _everything_

> is up for questioning; nothing is too sacred to be touched.

>

>

>

> >   Styles applied after your transformation to HTML?

>

> i'm not quite sure what you're asking.

>

> there isn't a whole lot of styling going on, as you'll see

> if you view source.  it's intentionally quite barren, since

> the e-book viewer-programs today ignore most styling,

> and substitute in their own, so it's best to just surrender.

>

> another consideration is that my philosophical bent is that

> it's the reader who should set many of the styling options.

> so my viewer-program will allow the reader to customize.

> part of the preparation for that is to get authors used to

> the notion that they no longer control the look-and-feel.

> (especially not with a tool that does the grunge for them.)

>

> so it's a combination of both practical and philosophical.

>

> having said all of that, the styling process is one of those

> things on which i'll be actively soliciting input from users.

>

> also, for instance, it would certainly be possible to offer

> authors the option of using their own c.s.s. stylesheet...

>

> and even if i didn't offer them that, it's not like they can't

> simply edit the .html output before they go public with it.

>

> what i haven't shown yet is that the .html gets wrapped up

> into an .epub, and a .mobi, and a .pdf is created as well...

> but you also get the .html files that build the .epub/.mobi.

> (the 4, x, and 5 buttons display the various .html outputs.

> right now, they're virtually identical; but they could fork.)

>

> -bowerbird

>

> p.s.  and yes, to all you haters whose mouths are frothing...

> if this conversation persists for long, we'll take it elsewhere.

> but if it makes you feel better, please post your rant anyway.

>

> _______________________________________________

> Markdown-Discuss mailing list

> Markdown-Discuss at six.pairlist.net

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss

>

>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/attachments/20120421/234096e8/attachment.htm>