Talk:Markup language

message: It's circular reasoning to invoke definitions of computer-related markup languages to "prove" that other text markup systems don't qualify. Handwritten markup may not be a computer language, but that doesn't mean it isn't language. Excluding it from the article is historically inaccurate. William Tunnicliffe and the IBM GenCode project did not invent the idea of a separate system for annotating the structure of a text and giving instructions on how to display it. Editors, typesetters, and proofreaders had been doing exactly that for a century or more. Early computers and computerized typesetting systems couldn't deal with the complexities of that system, so they had to have their own markup languages written that adapted it to their use. They've grown considerably since then, which I'm sure is very laudable of them, but that subsequent development doesn't remove handwritten markup from their ancestry, and ought not exclude it from the category in general. 
Other reasons to include handwritten markup: (1.) It's real. (2.) It's still in robust use. (3.) Users who need to know about it are going to try to look it up. (4.) Currently, Wikipedia is leaving terms like "stet" and "to come" in limbo. It notes that "stet" should be written near the words that are to be preserved unchanged, and that they should also have a row of dots drawn under them, but it omits the context in which this occurs.
In short, excluding it is an unnecessary oversimplification that makes this entry less useful and informative than it could be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.244.76.130 (talk • contribs) 13 April 2010
:I would like to see some reliable sources saying that the markup in manuscripts was a "markup language", and explaining its relationship to computer markup languages. As far as I know, the only formal definitions of markup languages are those of computer languages, and the term "markup language" didn't really exist before it was invented for computers. Please prove me wrong with some sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:00, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I strongly concur with Enric Naval.  The anonymous user at 67.244.76.130 clearly does not understand handwritten markup or markup languages.  Personally, I have extensive experience with both, as an attorney (handwritten markup is taught in American law schools) and as a former Web designer.  This is a simple example of a name ("markup") being transferred and borrowed ("markup language") because of a vague similarity.  It is silly to read anything more into that.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: We need an article on handwritten markup. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:06, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

text: Certainly typsetters markup is a "markup language" - indent, subscript, superscript, italics, change font, change size or spacing, etc. Peter Flass (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why dumb down this subject by omitting its history? 

message: I noticed that Plain Old Documentation is missing. Since I'm not a native English speaker, I hope someone else could add it.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.127.108.165 (talk) 12:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  POD missing 

message: The markup language we use for editing articles should be mentioned, but I don't know a name for it. --Error 23:55, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: "wikitext" --Maian 10:04, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: older entries

message: I'm not clear on the difference between presentational and procedural markup. For example, the article says that B is procedural, but I've never heard it classified it that way - I consider it presentational. What makes PRE presentational and B not? --Maian 09:42, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  presentational vs. procedural 

message: Although "presentational" is not as common as "descriptive" and  "procedural", it nevertheless has been defined and used in several ways over the years.  Among them: 
(i) rendering features such as "several newlines and spaces, thus accomplishing leading space and centering" (the definition text in this Wikipedia article); 
(ii) the procedural markup that specifies such features
(iii) the descriptive markup that asserts such features exist in a particular rendition being described.  
(And I think we can go after another sense, general declarative, as well, but I won't try that here).  
It is true that today the use of "presentational markup" in sense (ii) is often heard, and so Maian's query is not so surprising. This article, like the Coombs, Renear, DeRose (CACM 1987)  paper it cites, defines and then consistently uses "presentational markup" in the first sense (renditional features).  There is just one slip I think,  where it says: "The "i" instruction is an example of presentational markup. It specifies the exact appearance...".  In the sense of "presentational markup" being used the HTML elements "i" and "b" are not presentational markup -- they are both procedural markup specifying presentational markup.  There might at first glance appear to be another slip. Maian asks " What makes PRE presentational and B not?" Maian is I believe alluding to the article's statement that "...HTML also includes the PRE element, which encloses areas of presentational markup to be laid out exactly as typed."  But a close reading confirms that the article is not asserting that PRE itself is presentational, only that it encloses markup that is presentational.
Given that "presentational markup" is now often used in the second sense as well as the first, what is best in this article?  I prefer, strongly, the use in the current article; that is: sense (i), the renditional features themselves. For one thing we need that concept, and we have an established name for it, and published defended defintions, and literary warrant elsewhere in the literature, so let's stick with it.  And the more common and very well-established term "procedural markup" works just fine for most of the uses to which "presentational markup" in the (ii) sense would be put.
There are some issues here though. When we wish to contrast "i" with "div" it is most natural to say that "div" is descriptive and "i" is procedural, as we have been taught for 25 years; with those terms thought of as contrasting terms partitioning the space of possibilities at least with respect to symbol based markup systems. I am sure that no one wants to replace the word "procedural" with "presentational" in that taxonomy.  That would definitely be a bad idea. First because "descriptive/procedural" is still the most common terminology. And second because "procedural" is the classic and original term, promoted by Goldfarb (since who knows when) and an extended discussion of the distinction, expressed in those terms, is included as Annex A.1 of ISO8879, SGML.
Ok, here's the problem.  What about procedural markup that does not specify rendition, but rather some other sort of processing (indexing, change notification, etc)?  And what about descriptive (declarative) markup that describes rendition -- as when a physical bibliographer describes a title page?  If the uneasiness underneath Maian's observation is that some but not all procedural markup is presentational and how should that be accommodated terminologicall ... that remains a problem in markup taxonomy.  And the reason there has been pressure in favor of using "presentational" for "procedural" is that although not all procedural markup is presentational(ii), most of what we see around us in electronic publishing is.
Full disclosure: although I just stumbled upon this article so far haven't had a hand in editing it I am in fact a coauthor of the mentioned Coombs, Renear, DeRose CACM (1987) article where sense (i) of "presentational" is defined, so of course I am partisan.  In addition I've written on the issue raised above: "The "Descriptive/Procedural distinction is Flawed." in Markup Languages: Theory and Practice,  2:4 2000.  [I actually think that some of the (mis)use of "presentational", i.e. use of the term in the (ii) sense, started in the late 80s people hearing about our distinction second hand thought they could guess what we meant by it -- classic folk etymology,  or folk semantics]
I'm new to wikipedia so let me know if this talk contribution is  inappropriate in any way.  -- Allen Renear 20:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  presentational vs. procedural vs ... 

message: Is there a name for the "formatting" common in plain-text Usenet posts and email?
My understanding is that most lightweight markup languages are designed to look similar to it.
There seem to be many articles that briefly mention it:
( Underline, Italic type,  Word attachments, ...)
Is there a single article dedicated to it?
(Or should it go into a section of an article -- perhaps in lightweight markup language?)
--DavidCary 20:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  markup used in email and [[Usenet]] 

message: I suggest merging Markup (computing) to this article as it appears to be a small subset. JonHarder 14:52, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to merge  Markup (computing) to this article. 

message: ... whereas descriptive markup redirects to nowhere?
Just discovered that, while editing Semantic Web Services. There has been long discussions to know if markup languages, and singularly XML, were dealing with syntax only or if they add any semantics to the content. The section in the article about this issue is quite short, and it gives descriptive markup and semantic markup as synonyms. I'm not sure this is consensual and neutral. See e.g.  here, and there.
See also Semantic publishing. universimmedia 11:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur, I was looking for semantic markup and was truly confused about this redirection. The article does not make sense when looking for semantic markup (in the sense of the semantic web). I would expect to find how syntactical and semantic markup differs, whether RDF/OWL is markup or can be used for markup, what other options, microformats, etc. I was searching especially how Wikipedia intends to introduce semantics in the future (Wikitext does not help here). I cannot write this article, but would greatly appreciate an article on this. Vigilius (talk) 22:50, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why does [[semantic markup]] redirects to this article ... 

message: I notice that PostScript is included as a markup language. I have never heard it called that: I wonder in what way it meets the definition of markup. There is no underlying stream of text which is intermixed with graphic operators. It is just a programming language with graphics primitives, in this sense is it more of a markup language than, say, a C program with the X-Windows library? Is there any source (citation) for this classification?Notinasnaid 19:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In the absence of any comments, I've removed it. Notinasnaid 11:39, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with the deletion.  PostScript is a PAGE description language! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Coolcaesar (talk • contribs) 19:11, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  PostScript? 

message: In the primary paragraph, the definition of a markup language is not stated. The article tells the reader what it does, but does not state what it is.
Just another guy trying to be a Chemical Engineer, Nanobiotechnologist, and Mathematician 08:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  no definition 

message: Can anyone provide a citation for "markup men"? A quick check of the web does not reveal any other authoritative sources.
198.4.83.52 22:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  citation for "markup men" 

message: The markup language used by RUNOFF or its descendants (runoff (program), roff, nroff, troff, groff, etc.) probably belongs in the history section somewhere.  -- Peter Kaminski (talk) 22:01, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  RUNOFF 

message: In 1989, physicist Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a memo Although TBL had a degree in Physics, he was working as a software consultant (at CERN) at the time, and not as one of the CERN physicists.
217.24.204.11 (talk) 11:18, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Job description 

message: This really needs a good example at the start, a sort of before and after, showing the language instructions and the visible result. Myles325a (talk) 04:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example Required 

message: This article refers several times to "container languages" and implies that if something is a container language, it cannot also be a markup language. But Wikipedia has no article on "container language" and I don't know what one is, so the references in this article aren't informative to me. Is "container language" a widely used term in computer science? DSatz (talk) 14:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I also am confused by the term "container language". Is it a synonym of digital container format ? --DavidCary (talk) 17:02, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinction between a markup language and a "container language"? 

message: There are many many markup languages out there. A google search on 'Markup languages' in wikipedia.org results in about 6200 pages! The markup languages category only covers 184 of them. 
I think there are several issues here:
* The development of numerous markup languages (mostly based on XML) for a wide veriety of applications should be indicated in the body this page. 
* The "Types of Markup languages" bar is incomplete. There are so many markup languages that carefull thought and organisation would be necessary for such a bar to be effective here. In my limited wikipedia experience, I'm not sure how best to do that..
* The 'markup languages' category and sub-categories could do with an overhaul to better reflect the current state of the game.
That sounds like a huge ammount of work! Drevicko (talk) 00:15, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thousands of markup languages - how to integrate them here? 

message: I removed the claim in the first paragraph that markup languages are "artificial languages." I think that's not only quite misleading, it's not substantiated by the article on artificial language to which it referred. While I was there, I also tried to make the first two paragraphs somewhat clearer for a non-technical reader. dweinberger (talk) 21:45, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not an artificial language 

message: Hi, I just removed this content from the HTML Wiki for reasons explained at the first link.  It provides some sources but no citations. --Jesdisciple (talk) 07:48, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content from the HTML Wiki 

message: The description about SGML says that SGML is a direct ancestor to HTML and LaTeX, but it seems not... I think LaTeX is a typo of XML. What do you think? --121.165.19.1 (talk) 01:05, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  LaTeX seems not to be a direct decsendant of SGML 

message: In this page, tags play an important role as a general concept, but a link on tag brings to the HTML page as if only HTML had real tags! I realise that there is no page about tags. If the general opinion would be that tag is not worth a page, then a page as this one (markup language) should play the role by having a section explaining tags in general. HTLM or other pages should then refer, about tags, to the tag page or the tag section in the present page, not the other way round. --Dominique Meeùs (talk) 09:50, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of "tag" page 

message: The article currently suggests that 'Semantic' is an alternative name for 'Descriptive; however the explanation of 'Descriptive' adopts a very word-processor view of documents. In associating semantics with the structure and layout of documents, it is missing the fact that their written words have semantics that can also be marked up. I am currently working on a system where 'Descriptive' and 'Semantic' markup are quite distinct, and so I cannot cite this article as a reliable explanation. TonyP (talk) 10:12, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Descriptive vs. Semantic 

message: The article currently claims that Scribe, presented in Brian Reid's doctoral thesis of 1980, was the "first language to make a clean distinction between structure and presentation". This claim seems exaggerated, if not factually incorrect. At IBM, Charles Goldfarb had been working on GML for most of the seventies, and GML was released commercially in 1978. ARK (talk) 09:14, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure whether the original question is settled, but I did notice that much of the content from the History of markup languages section > Scribe, GML, and SGML topic appears on  another site. Not sure which is chicken, and which is egg, but perhaps someone more experienced should take a look. 206.201.77.152 (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scribe vs GML 

message: Why in the heck does Text encoding redirect to here? Wouldn't it make a great deal more sense for it to redirect to Character encoding instead??? Nlburgin (talk) 03:57, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: It's sort of defensible, but yeah, I think anyone actually looking for that keyword would be better served by going to character encoding. DLynch (talk) 17:09, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonsense redirect