A general-purpose markup language is a

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

that is used for more than one purpose or situation. Other, more specialized

domain-specific Domain specificity is a theoretical position in cognitive science (especially modern cognitive development) that argues that many aspects of cognition are supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily specified, learning devices. The posit ...

markup languages are often based upon these languages. For example, HTML 4.1 and earlier are domain-specific markup languages (for webpages), and are based on the syntax of

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": * Declarative: Markup should ...

, which is a general-purpose markup language.

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Notable general-purpose markup languages include: *

ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) is a standard interface description language for defining data structures that can be serialized and deserialized in a cross-platform way. It is broadly used in telecommunications and computer networking, and ...

(Abstract Syntax Notation One) *

EBML Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML) is a generalized file format for any kind of data, aiming to be a binary equivalent to XML. It provides a basic framework for storing data in XML-like tags. It was originally developed for the Matroska audio ...

* LML - general-purpose markup language for expressing markdown, variables, and expressions for machine-readable and executable legal documentation * GML - the predecessor of

- a predecessor of

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

- a stripped-down form of SGML *

YAML YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Ext ...

* GLML - General-purpose Legal Markup Language

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See also