Wikipedia says that a markup language is ”a system for annotating a text in a way which is syntactically distinguishable from that text“. So we could say that is a type of language that is used for the processing, definition and presentation of a text. It’s made by different codes and is the system used to read a webpage, for example.
When we read a text, we don’t see any codes, but there are a lot of codes that determin if something is a title, a part of a paragraph, if that is set to be published in bold… all information about the text is there.
One of the best-known markup languages is what we call the HTML, which is one of the most used formats for the World Wide Web.
And what are exactly the HTML codes?
- HTML are the initials for HyperText Markup Language and it is the language that is used in the Web pages. It has nothing to do with what we see on our screens as it’s just different codes that make the structure of the site and make us possible to put a image in it. The codes are difficult, and someone who hasn’t learned them can probably not understand what they mean. A simple example would be how to put a text in bold. It would be something like this: <b>text< /b> or <strong>text< /strong> (space between < and / must not be put).
There are also other type of codes such as XML or GenCode.
- XML are the initials for Extensible Markup Language and it’s a simple format derived from SGML. It is important in data on the Web and in many other places. It was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, a comittee created and chaired by Jon Bosak. Every XML document is written so it’s also a SGML document, but it’s much simpler than the SGML.
- GenCode or Generic Coding is a response to the emergence of programs such as RUNOFF. It was presented by William W. Tunnicliffe, who then became the first chair of the International Organization for Standardization comittee, which created what we call SGML (ancestor to HTML).
References:
- Markup Language (21.03, November 2, 2009). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16.39, November 26, 2009, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language
- Markup Language (2009). In Webopedia. Retrieved 17.07, November 26, 2009, from: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/m/markup_language.html
- HTML (15.37, November 26, 2009). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17.30, November 26, 2009, from: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML
- Extensible Markup Language (XML) (14.32, April 16, 2009). In Ubiquitous Web. Retrieved 18.05, November 26, 2009, from: http://www.w3.org/XML/
