Digital BW, The Print

Austin -- You're not making enough of it. ;)

At the very least, that article is helpful to your understanding 
because it seems to distinguish two different senses of dynamic 
range.  One that has to do merely with the difference between darkest 
and lightest shades, and one that has to do with the number of tones 
that can be rendered between those two endpoints. Most of the people 
disputing your understanding in the various threads have maintained 
that dynamic range has nothing to do with the number of tones 
representable, just with the difference between highest and lowest.  
This article demonstrates at the very least that using "dynamic 
range" to refer to the number of representable (or represented) tones 
is an appropriate use of the term.  

Moreover, the article emphasizes the importance of 'dynamic range' 
when understood as having to do with the number of representable 
tones:

 "Dynamic range also describes a digital
  system's ability to reproduce tonal information.
  This capability is most important for 
  continuous-tone documents that exhibit 
  smoothly varying tones, and for photographs
  it may be the single most important 
  aspect of image quality."

Finally, the example pictures clearly favor your understanding, 
because the difference between the high dynamic range pictures and 
the low dynamic range pictures has to do only with the number of 
tones represented, not with the highest and lowest tonal values; all 
pictures appear to vary from full white to full black, and so to have 
equal dynamic range using that term as most of the people disagreeing 
with you have used it.  

-- Herb