Lots of comments here to the effect of "novelists don't need full-featured rich styling*, it's all just plain text!" It's true for _many_ novels.
But it's not true for _all_ novels! House of Leaves (Danielewski) and S. (Abrams/Dorst) are full-fledged multimedia novels. Many fantasy novels use maps; Crying of Lot 49 uses at least 1 image, in situ. And I would love to see an edition of Pale Fire (Nabokov) that interposes annotations between the "original formatting" of the poem!
"The novel" isn't really a well-defined concept...there are many interpretations of the basic concept! The high % of novels that are "just text" is descriptive, not prescriptive.
* Use whatever definition of "rich text" you like, I don't care
But it's not true for _all_ novels! House of Leaves (Danielewski) and S. (Abrams/Dorst) are full-fledged multimedia novels. Many fantasy novels use maps; Crying of Lot 49 uses at least 1 image, in situ. And I would love to see an edition of Pale Fire (Nabokov) that interposes annotations between the "original formatting" of the poem!
"The novel" isn't really a well-defined concept...there are many interpretations of the basic concept! The high % of novels that are "just text" is descriptive, not prescriptive.
* Use whatever definition of "rich text" you like, I don't care