perhaps you meant penflip's loren, not the original poster?
if so, then yes, what i'm saying exactly is that _loren_
could have saved himself time and trouble, in the long run,
by coding a purpose-built system, instead of hacking github.
what it would've cost him, however, is the huge "jumpstart"
he received by proclaiming his goal as "github for writers".
the kneejerk response to that, from the tech circles, was
something that created huge word-of-mouth and mind-share,
not to mention a great starting user-base, of technoids.
but that was months ago, and now there's some sense of
"whatever happened to penflip?" and when he goes out to
sell the system to writers, the "github" label will not be
a benefit at all. (if anything, it will be a liability;
but i think in general writers are fully unaware of it.)
all of this is my opinion. you, like loren, may disagree.
if you already know git (or github), it'll work for books.
but i doubt it's the best change-tracking system for them.
too much irrelevant crap, and it doesn't cut to the heart
of those things that actually need to be done for a book.
plus, most writers will never slog through learning github.
to make a system that is writer-friendly _and_ does what
a book-writing change-tracking system ideally _should_ do,
you'd have to hack github so much that -- in the end --
it would have been order-of-magnitude simpler (and better)
to program a purpose-built system instead, from scratch.
and yes, i told loren this from day one.
he didn't believe me then.
but if you ask him now, i'll bet he won't be quite so sure.
and by the time he's done, i have no doubt he will agree.
hi. bowerbird here, checking in with you two.
i haven't forgotten you, just been working on
smoothing out the latest wrinkle in my thinking,
which i do believe has made a huge improvement.
i'll get some stuff to both of you, quite pronto.
on the other hand, i know photographers in art/advertising
-- working for some of the biggest companies, like apple --
who brag that "not one pixel goes out without being touched".
> I grew up just as computers were becoming mainstream,
> the spread of the internet coincided with my teens,
> saw the rise of “Web 2.0” during college
i usually eat up these stories.
but your vague phrases, on both sides of the equation,
make it impossible to make any sense out of the piece.
you recognize great change has occurred during this time,
but without specifying the years, _exactly,_ the message
you've sent (and any meaning it might have) is confused.
attaching solid dates -- the exact year when you born,
the exact year when you graduated from college, etc. --
would give remarkably more meaningful reference points.
"setext" was short for "structured e-text", and yes, that's
why "restructured-text" put the "re" in front of its name,
because they were "redoing" the structured-e-text of setext.
but even ian feldman would tell you (if you could find him)
that he was merely leveraging the well-known conventions of
the fledging internet at the time, such as usenet listserves.
"light-markup" is something that _the_masses_ "invented".
i think most people will tell you that it _is_ easier.
first, it's one character, as opposed to three or four.
and, as you get into longer tags, like "em" or "strong",
so grows the amount of excess typing you'll need to do.
(i won't mention "blockquote", but you know that i could!)
second, it's the _same_ on both sides, not different.
and there's no question about the direction of a slash,
which is not intuitive to people who don't code .html.
third, let us recall that some structures, like lists,
need internal "li/li" tag-pairs on each individual item,
as well as the "ul/ul" tag-pair located on the outside.
fourth, all the brackets/tags are intrusive when editing.
your mind has to "look past" the markup to see the text,
and those distractions make writing more difficult than
it already is, and there's no reason to put up with that.
fifth, the distraction gets even worse if you want to have
curly-quotes, because there's crap like “this”;
and let’s all agree we don’t need that garbage!
sixth, .html can get downright complicated, very quickly.
can you tell me how "pre", "code", and "keyboard" differ?
probably not, not just off the top of your head, anyway...
and what's the abbreviation tag again? i always forget it.
and seventh, you mean i have to put a "p" tag on _every_
paragraph? _every_ one? can't it just do _that_ for me?
it's pretty obvious that blank line means "new paragraph".
i mean, seriously, sometimes computers are _so_stupid!_
so, um, yeah, actually, light-markup is a _lot_ easier.
still... if _you_ prefer to write in .html, be my guest!
but me? well, i've got way more important things to do.
i forget this is the tech hangout for the wanna-be-rich.
so now i'm sitting here trying to decide whether i can
come up with something that will make you all understand
how the super-duper-massively-rich have rigged the game.
poisoned the planet in their winner-take-all grudge-match,
killed off animals like they were pit-bulls in a dog-fight,
treated the polar ice-caps like ice-sculptures at a party,
and kept throwing bigger rocks (a.k.a. bombs) at each other.
and by the time the split shifts the span, and you _might_
figure it out (or maybe not even then), it'll be too late.
way too late.
but i can't come up with anything, except just to say it,
and since (as i just said) it'll be too late anyway, then
i guess it doesn't even really have to be said at all, eh?
so yeah, chase your dreams, kids, and try to become rich...
probably best not to have any kids of your own, though,
because you might find yourself getting attached to them,
and worrying about their future, which they will never see,
because the human race ran out of time before they got old.
even 0.1% overstates the real number of the ruling class.
google tells me there are some 1600+ billionaires today.
those are the guys (and a few girls) who are really dirty.
you can't get (or stay) that rich without hurting people.
this is the locus of greed that will sacrifice the planet
rather than "give in to someone else having more than me".
these are the high-stakes players, the ones who _really_
pull the strings. everyone else is just their string-puppet.
it's also a small enough number that we can closely examine
every single one of these individuals to solidly _confirm_
that their avarice and power-broking is truly despicable,
so we can confidently brand them as an enemy of the people.
this will put them on notice, and give them an opportunity
to "opt out" of their bad behaviors and gain our reprieve.
let them keep their money and a lavish lifestyle, but only
_if_ they can actually reign in their destructive actions.
recognizing the value of a nice sonorous phrase, i suggest
"the filthy 1500", so we will set our focus appropriately.
and, given that these are world-class competitive bastards,
i'd predict that many will work so they can _make_ the list.
-bowerbird