improve intro

1 files changed, 21 insertions, 20 deletions

diff --git a/_intro.qmd b/_intro.qmd
index 948136d..8d2f9ef 100644
--- a/_intro.qmd
+++ b/_intro.qmd
@@ -7,29 +7,30 @@ and the Pandoc-based document authoring framework Quarto,
 and is suitable for scholarly writing
 where styling may be dictated by a publisher.
 
-When writing with Quarto,
-you can add intuitive and unobtrusive structural markup
-for headers, emphasis, lists and hyperlinks.
+Pandoc and Quarto lack support for annotations
+beyond the specific contexts of hypertext navigation and scholarly citation.
 You can annotate a string as a hyperlink with a title,
 or as a citation with a source reference.
-You can add authors, supervisors and publication date
-as a YAML structure at the top of the text.
-And you can produce a web page or a PDF document from your text,
-sensibly styled and laid out according to academic conventions.
-You cannot, however, annotate a string
-contextually related an arbitrary content domain
-(only navigationally for hypertext and quotationally for citations).
+You can add docuent-wide metadata
+as a YAML structure at the top of the text --
+both using well-defined keys for author, supervisor and publication date
+and arbitrarily added keys.
+And you can produce a web page or a PDF document from your text.
+You cannot, however, write an annotation for a string
+contextually related an arbitrary content domain,
+and then in the output document
+have that annotation suppressed yet accessible as metadata.
 
-You can spell out in prose
-that one set of numbers is in meter and another in nautical miles,
-or that one citation is supportive and another a rebuttal,
-or that Jane refers to "it" derogatory
-whereas Joe uses "it" as preferred personal pronoun.
-You cannot structurally annotate such details
-omitted from contents of the output document
-yet available for visual styling, indexing
-and other automated processing,
-and as intuitive and unobtrusive writing aid.
+Example annotations might include
+one set of numbers is in meter and another in nautical miles,
+one citation being supportive and another a rebuttal,
+or that one quote uses "she" as personal pronoun
+and another uses it derogatory.
+Such meta information tied not to the document as a whole
+but to specific strings in the text
+cannot be written as such --
+i.e. structurally part of the writing
+but communicatively meta to the prose content of the text.
 
 ## Problem formulation