The markup language is a way to codify a text using, apart of it, another tag or mark that have aditional information about the text’s estructure or its presentation. The most commonly used one is HTML (HyperText Markup Language), but there’s also another one, less known, but also important: XML (Extensible Markup Language).
HTML describes the structure of the text (paragraphs, bold, lists) and the content of it in text form, and also supplements it with interactive forms like links. It is written in form of tags surrounded by angle brackets ( < > ).
XML it helps to create custom markup languages and allows the user to define the mark-up elements. Its main purpouse is to help with the information systems in sharing structured data mainly via Internet.
XML and HTML are different and they both have different goals. They are designed for different purposes. Some people think that XML is an advanced version of HTML and it has come to replace html. It is not the case. Both will be there as they are used for different purposes.
- XML files are meant to hold data and data in an XML file is well described. If you look at an XML file you can say what it holds. For example if you find a number in an XML file you can find out easily what that number identifies, whether it is the number of products, or the price of a product etc. In HTML it is not the case.
- HTML is used to display the data in a formatted way. You can apply styles and use different layouts to display the data in an html file. The data that is displayed in an html file could come from an xml file.
Something that has appeared after the creation of the HTML and XML is the Blogosphere, which covers all blogs and their interconnections.
Recently the media has started treating the blogosphere as a gauge of public opinion, and it has been cited in both academic and non-academic work as evidence of rising or falling resistance to globalization.
Sites such as Technorati, BlogPulse, Tailrank, and BlogScope make possible the interconnections between bloggers.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogspace
http://www.blogospherenews.com/
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci1007574,00.html
http://www.xml-training-guide.com/d-xml4.html
By Ana Ruiz, Marta Retuerto, Deiene Zorriketa, Laura Nozal & Begoña de Quintana.
