>However, we need text *now*. Something simple, something useful for the
>majority of applications in the V1.0 time frame, i.e. this year. Chris's
>proposal as modified over the last week fits the bill nicely.
Well, AsciiText might fit the bill for a certain set of problems, but
in the long term it's hopeless, even for English. The problem is: it
will set a precedent, or in other words, teach people the wrong ideas
about text manipulation.
>1) This specification is for the *first* version of a language we
>expect to grow with use over the new few years, as has HTML.
You should be very careful about trying to use HTML as an example of
ordered growth or design...
>But I am single-minded about bringing this issue to closure
>(focus is one of my more endearing and annoying qualities, ask any of my
>friends), and I have grown tired of attempts to pull this issue up into the
>ivory towers. There are people like myself who need to spend their time
>*working*, not sparring on a mailing list.
One of my less endearing features is that I like to implement things
as a way of understanding them. I also *work* between 10 and 16 hours
a day, 6 days a week. One reason for my irritability on mailing lists
is that any particiation at all costs me hours a day; hours I can ill
afford to spend.
I hope to try my hand at designing a somewhat cleaner text handling
system in the near future.