This sounds exciting! (Though I must say, I am all but married to Org at this point.)
On a different note though, I feel that Microsoft Word, and web browsers, really do a terrible job at rendering text. Kerning is often bad, there are frequent widows and orphans, pagination is often a mess, hyphenation is laughable. These are real issues and they are not solved by a different markup language.
So far, TeX and Indesign are the only software I know of that really manage to solve this problem. I would love to see a new export format that can deal with this.
Maybe what we really need is a new middle ground: A kind of LLVM for text processing. An intermidiary machine format that serves as a target for all different kinds of markup languages that can be further compiled to beautifully rendered text in whatever format you desire.
needed to clear my plate / get that off my chest...
*
if you'd be so kind as to point to either of those,
here at h.n. or elsewhere, i'd consider it an honor.
(i have never been able to get any traction here;
i guess i need to go see what the reddit kids say.)
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i too am totally dissatisfied with web typography.
it's atrocious. but a lot of the problems you note
_can_ be corrected, such as widows, and pagination,
if you adopt a mindset that considers it important.
and i won't stop until i've created e-books that
are _both_ highly functional _and_ very beautiful.
anyway, thanks again.
-bowerbird
p.s. but i don't think we even need hyphenation now.
On a different note though, I feel that Microsoft Word, and web browsers, really do a terrible job at rendering text. Kerning is often bad, there are frequent widows and orphans, pagination is often a mess, hyphenation is laughable. These are real issues and they are not solved by a different markup language.
So far, TeX and Indesign are the only software I know of that really manage to solve this problem. I would love to see a new export format that can deal with this.
Maybe what we really need is a new middle ground: A kind of LLVM for text processing. An intermidiary machine format that serves as a target for all different kinds of markup languages that can be further compiled to beautifully rendered text in whatever format you desire.