basics

I have a question about the basics of this project. (Forgive me, please, if 
I am a bit slow to catch on. I may have missed obvious answers to these 
questions. I'm just learning about XML.)

Suppose one is presented with a text containing a few patterns like:

This was originally set in BOLD letters, where all caps means that the 
printed original use bold type. To mark up this text, shouldn't one 
actually format the text in bold rather than presenting it as found in the 
ASCII only version?

Some poetry has structure such as:

This is a verse.
   I know for a fact.
It could  be worse.
   If I mess up my act.

If this is marked as verse + lines, both HTML and XML lose the two blanks. 
One could mark it as:

<verse>
<line.a>This is a verse</line>
<line.b>I know for a fact.</line>
<line.a>It could be worse,</line
<line.b>If I mess up my act.</line>
</verse>

... but defining a and b violates the DTD.

Some verses are indented or doubly indented. The ascii markup used leading 
blanks to indicate both indents and italics. Again, the HTML blockquote 
does this very well. It isn't in the DTD, however.

And if you really want some fun, mark up the gutblurb so that it can be 
rendered visible by changing the attribute display:none; to
display:block; . IE5 presents all this fine. The XML validator throws up.

So, what is the purpose? Mark up for presentation or to replicate the ASCII 
limitations?

If the choice is presentation, where are the tools to make this possible?

lewy(at)iname.com

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