A
markup language combines text and extra information about the text. The extra information, for example about the text’s structure or presentation, is expressed using
markup, which is intermingled with the primary text. The best-known
markup language in modern use is HTML (hypertext
markup language), one of the foundations of the World Wide Web. Another, newer,
markup language that has gained great importance is
XML (
extensible markup language).
XML was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. The main purpose of
XML was to simplify SGML (Scribe General
Markup Language) by focusing on a particular problem — documents on the Internet.
XML remains a meta-
language like SGML, allowing users to create any tags needed (hence “
extensible”) and then describe those tags and their permitted uses.
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