msp_yc

Not sure why this is downvoted, it’s absolutely correct. I tried this myself; it would have -greatly- simplified scraping Word docs because the custom tags would have been available for XPath querying. Alas, Word strips it all on open.

As much as I don't care for the adage, "those who can, do; those who don't, teach" fits here :)

From the paper: "The purpose of writing is to convey ideas to the reader. The purpose of formatting is to make the document easier to read, not to look pretty."

I find that thesis a bit reductive. For technical writing, I can agree - the purpose is to convey ideas. But, there is a whole other class of writing that isn't intended to convey ideas, but _emotion_.

Also from the paper: "The purpose of document design is to display the logical structure of the document through its formatting, thereby making it easier to read."

Again, there's a whole other class of documents whose formatting takes precedence over the logical information, intended to evoke emotion.

Not to take away from Lamport, who is seriously brilliant, but there appears to be a blind spot here.

The consideration, objective; the phrasing, doubleplusungood.

Actually, I kinda think it fits with the topic! You've managed to make an oblique cultural reference to the exact issue at hand:

YouTube users: Can I see it?

Google: ...no.

Mr. Burns : Absolutely! Who could forget such a monstrous visage? She has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal.

Waylon Smithers : Uh, Sir? Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago.

Mr. Burns : Of course you'd say that... you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!

How many people here think of encryption as a second amendment right?

If you find yourself arguing that it is - what happens when you are largely, if not wholly, dependent on a third party to be able to exercise that right?

We've decided that corporations get first amendment rights independent of their members - do they also get second amendment rights?

Are these just silly arguments? It's late Friday afternoon...

The banks also turned around, repackaged those same predatory loans, and marked tranches of them as AAA-investment quality. Where was the responsibility in that activity?

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should"

Indeed.

Now society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists,—talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having. They have, they tell you, an intense love of nature; poetry,—O, they adore poetry,—and roses, and the moon, and the cavalry regiment, and the governor; they love liberty, “dear liberty!” they worship virtue, “dear virtue!” Yes, they adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. A little experience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist, the soul that is lost by mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment? Was ever one converted? The innocence and ignorance of the patient is the first difficulty; he believes his disease is blooming health. A rough realist or a phalanx of realists would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend your bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, imprisonment, might be tried. Another cure would be to fire with fire, to match a sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin to suspect that something was wrong.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson