Bill Janssen <janssen(_at_)parc(_dot_)xerox(_dot_)com>
kindly replied to my comments about simpletext.
I don't want to make this a big issue... so this is short.
Thanks for the comments, Lee. I think if you read my original posting
on simpletext, you will see why SGML constructs don't make much sense
here (though I'll check out the IDREF mechanism).
I think that if they are simple enough they might, although I do accept
that for *emphasis* and _another-style-of-emphasis_ the Usenet conventions
are fine in their way, and I do see why you want to use them.
I am also [...] opposed to
procedural markup such as ``bold, italic, paragraphs, special squiggles
(&pilcrow;) and so forth''.
I don't like procedural markup either, although paragraphs and special
squiggles don't fall into that category. <Bold> and <Italic> have
(unfortunately) been proposed for mime/richtext...
I think that, because of your objectives, most of the simple markup you
describe is fine. When you move onto more complex markup, such as cross-
references and reference to external `thingies', I think it would be better
if you could do it in an SGML-compliant way, which need not be verbose or
unpleasant, but might help future compatibility, and might help people migrate
to more sophisticated standards in the future.
I'd also like to see markup explicit wherever possible, partly to minimise
the chances of people accidentally typing
:rofix
or some other string that is magic, but more because I'd like to be able to
keep mail and news articles for a long time. Years. And in five years' time,
I might not remember the conventions, beyond perhaps _word_ which is
written into my brain from a decade's use :-)
So for footnotes and xrefs, I'd suggest at least thinking hard about a way
to handle them that could be handled by some SGML parser, if that does not
make them noticeably harder to type. And if it will help, I could try and
come up with something that met those goals where possible, if you want.
Lee
--
lee(_at_)sq(_dot_)com (Liam Quin) the barefoot programmer; SoftQuad Inc +1 416
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