What a great spin down memory lane. It makes me . . not angry, not really. Mostly sad. I'm very much neck deep in the world of publishing software, and one of

What a great spin down memory lane. It makes me . . not angry, not really. Mostly sad. I'm very much neck deep in the world of publishing software, and one of the great mysteries is how the quality and functionality of all the tools in this ecosystem have followed, at best, a flat line, at worst they've broken through the basement floor. 2/3rd of Word functionality circa 2003 just vanished, replaced by who knows what. They somehow made ordered lists opaque. Nice work, lads. XML publishing . . I can't even talk about this garbage fire. XML vendors. In most vocabularies nothing more than a cackle of cash vampires, each one a giant "Industry Standard" software purchase that goes nowhere for half a decade, while the rank and file keep using Paint and Word. Then management closes it up and starts all over. There's a few exceptions I can count off on one hand, and most of those are completely customized for a specific program, never again to see light of day. Luckily users aren't idiots, and this general trajectory in DTP has fueled the revolution in lightweight markup. I am a cynical but willing participant. Asciidoc core supports transclusion, partial transclusion, and conditional content without extensions or out of the box crap, the Power Trio that writers everywhere have driven through hell and high water to find. Borrowing some linters and other developer tools, you get all the XML functionality for nothing at all. And the thing works, for free, with normal software. So people can spend their time thinking about shit that matters, like maintainability, level of repair, root cause analysis. But sometimes that's a little too scary for a lot of people. Usually writers get sucked back in by some shyster from Official Software for Industry, and oh boy here we go again. Spoiler: there IS NO INDUSTRY STANDARD. It's MADE UP. Each one is going to be customized out the wazoo for your business - it's natural language, there is no getting around that. Also, before you blow a truckload on integration you MIGHT WANT TO CHECK IF THERE IS ANYTHING TO INTEGRATE WITH. Cripes. I think I sprained something writing that. I got an offer to jump into front end development and I am thinking pretty hard about making that jump. This whole business is a scam, or, worse, just thirty years of people wasting their entire goddamn lives moving angle brackets around. Anyway, thanks for the post!