Styled Text, htmlText and Variables

[Cubist at aol.com]

sez edgore at shinra.com:
>Am I correct in thinking that you can't change the style of or get the
>htmlText of a variable?
>It doesn't work when I try it, meaning that I have to thunk the variable's
>content into a field to do these thigns with/to it.
   I'm confused. Why would you *want* to fiddle with the *style* of the 
htmlText of anything? The htmlText is a plain, unadorned character string; it 
just so happens that some of the characters in that string are really "stage 
directions" which tell a browser (or Rev, I guess...) how to display the 
*other* characters. Once you've got the htmlText, you can then add or 
subtract those "stage directions" to affect how various bits of it are 
displayed -- but wouldn't it be simpler to just blow off the htmlText, and 
simply say "set the textStyle of word X of field Y to BOLD"?