XM<EM>L</EM>

[Eve L. Maler]

At 06:51 PM 1/15/98 -0500, Paul Prescod wrote:
>james anderson wrote:
>> 
>> greetings,
>> 
>> am i the only one who is struck by the frequency with which such
clarifying
>> remarks appear on this list? i know there was "SGML" and there was
"HTML", but
>> why is does XML have to be "XM<EM>L</EM>"?
>> 1. the PR is so absolutely clear that it is intended to be a notation
and not a
>> language.
>
>My definition of language (and it is hardly one I invented!!) is a set
>(perhaps infinite) of strings. The definition of the language states
>what strings are in it and what strings are not. The set of strings
>conforming to PR-xml are in the language and the set not conforming to
>it are outside.

The "Language" part of XML (and SGML) is not so much the problem, because
they're both obviously languages (according to the commonly understood
definition that Paul provided).  Calling them "Markup Languages" is where
the names really get confusing because we tend to think of "tag set" as a
markup language.

To be really proper, I would say that they're markup *meta*languages, or
markup language *generators*.  Or languages *for* [making] markup.  These
aren't very pretty options, though...

	Eve

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