A descriptive, logical or conceptual markup language are used to label text components based on what they are, rather than how they should be processed. They separate the content from the format.
This post features descriptive markup languages.
This post is part of a more general post about markup languages.
List of Descriptive Markup Languages
Description markup languages featured on this post:
- Heavy
- HTML
- XHTML
- MEML
- MathML
- LaTeX
- OpenDocument Format
- TEI
- Lightweight
- Markdown family
- Wikitext
- reStructuredText
- DITA
- AsciiDoc
- DocBook
- Djot
HTML
HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
You can read this post about HTML.
XML
You can read this post about XML.
XHTML
XML is a markup language. It is focused on the data inside, but not how it looks like.
XHTML is a review of HTML based on XML.
MEML
MEML is a Lisp-like markup language (based on nested parenthesis) that can be transformed into HTML.
MathML
MathML is a mathematical markup language based on XML.
It is included in HTML5, and it is registered as the standard ISO/IEC 40314.
You can read a tutorial on MathML on this external link.
OpenDocument Format
OpenDocument Format (ODF) is a markup language for office documents, such as word processors, spreadsheets or presentations.
ODF is standardized as ISO/IEC 26300-1.
ISO/IEC 26300-1 versions:
- ISO/IEC 26300:2006
- ISO/IEC 26300-1:2015
TEI
TEI is used in humanities and linguistic texts.
Markdown family
Markdown is family of lightweight markup languages, with different variants.
You can read a dedicated post about Markdown.
Djot
Djot was created by the Pandoc creator and CommonMark co-creator, with the aim of solving some ambiguities found in CommonMark.
Its development started in July 2022.
Wikitext
Wikitext or Wiki Markup is a lightweight markup language used in Wiki websites.
You can read this post about Wikitext.
reStructuredText
reStructuredText (reST) is the main markup language used in Sphinx, a document generator used in the Python community for scientific text.
DITA
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a specification issued by OASIS.
It is used mainly to define technical document. It allows export to other formats.
AsciiDoc
AsciiDoc is used on scientific documents.
DocBook
DocBook is a markup language used in publishing.
Programmable typesetting language
TeX
TeX is a programmable typesetting language.
LaTeX is based on TeX. You can read this post on LaTeX.
Markup-to-doc converters
You can read this post about markup-to-doc converters.