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RE: Why is text marked up ?

• From: Norm Birkett <Norm.Birkett@reval.com>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:36:56 +0000

Handwritten markup employs a variety of conventions, anything from "write it in red so it stands out [and terrorizes the student, as an added bonus]" to "employ standard proofreading symbols." But it is, by definition, handwritten.

There are printed markups, as well, which amount to book designers' attempts to make various information that bears on a text accessible but not intrusive. E.g., a little degree-symbol by a word means you should look at the footer for a definition of that word (common in editions of Shakespeare); or the much more elaborate conventions used in the textual apparatus of the UBS text of the Greek New Testament; or the way cross-references are indicated in Bibles with cross-references.

It is when you want machines to be able to read markup that the preceding techniques stop working, and you markup your text with SGML or XML or HTML or some such. This is harder for humans but easier for machines to read. Which doesn't mean humans can't read it.

So: yes and no. One only adopts a strict character-sequence-based markup language out of deference to machines. But one sometimes might employ it with the intention to have people read it.

Norm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Lee [mailto:dlee@calldei.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 2:17 PM
> To: 'davep'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE:  Why is text marked up ?
> 
> This is the most succinct to date ... but I suggest there are non-
> mechanical reasons for markup as well.   Markup in a real sense
> simulates the "pen on paper" 'markup' used by editors, historians,
> students etc in traditional non-mechanical worlds ...
> 
> So I question:
> 
> "Is Markup ONLY for mechanical/machine purposes ?"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> David A. Lee
> dlee@calldei.com
> http://www.xmlsh.org
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: davep [mailto:davep@dpawson.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 2:02 PM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re:  Why is text marked up ?
> 
> 
> On 01/19/2012 04:58 PM, Henry S. Thompson wrote:
> > David Lee writes:
> >
> >> "Why is text marked up" ?
> > To make explicit for mechanical processing what is
> > implicit-but-evident in the original.
> >
> > ht
> I think that sums up quite a few uses?
> Misses metadata, but includes such as toc links,
> indexing, formatting for presentation, filtering,
> selection/re-organisation etc.
>    Very succinct Henry.
> 
> regards
> 
> --
> Dave Pawson
> XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
> http://www.dpawson.co.uk
> 
> 
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• References:
  • Why is text marked up ?
    • From: "David Lee" <dlee@calldei.com>
  • Re: Why is text marked up ?
    • From: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk (Henry S. Thompson)
  • Re: Why is text marked up ?
    • From: davep <davep@dpawson.co.uk>
  • RE: Why is text marked up ?
    • From: "David Lee" <dlee@calldei.com>