HyTime (''Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring 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 an application 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 ...
. HyTime defines a set of
hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...
-oriented element types that, in effect, supplement SGML and allow SGML document authors to build hypertext and multimedia presentations in a standardized way.
HyTime is an international standard published by the
ISO and
IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
. The first edition was published in 1992,
and the second edition was published in 1997.
Legacy
Some of the concepts formalized in HyTime were later incorporated into
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...
and
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 ...
:
* HTML is an application of SGML for
hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...
document presentations, that assigns specific semantics and processing expectations to a fixed set of element types.
* XML defines a simplified subset of SGML that focuses on providing an open vocabulary of element types for
data modeling
Data modeling in software engineering is the process of creating a data model for an information system by applying certain formal techniques.
Overview
Data modeling is a process used to define and analyze data requirements needed to su ...
and establishes precise expectations for how the
marked-up data is read and subsequently fed to another software application for further processing, but does not assign semantics to the element types or establish expectations for how the data is processed.
*
XLink was intended as a simplified version of HyTime for use in the XML world, but has not seen much adoption.
* Work on applying HyTime to back-of-book indexes eventually led to the development of
Topic Maps, which eventually became far more successful in its own right than HyTime ever was.
Standard
The HyTime standard itself is ISO/IEC 10744, first published in 1992 and available from the
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in A ...
. It was developed by
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, Document description and processing languages is a subcommittee of the ISO/IEC JTC 1 joint technical committee, which is a collaborative effort of both the International Organization for Standardization and the International ...
(ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 34 - Document description and processing languages).
Further reading
*
Steven DeRose
Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; ...
and David Durand, "Making Hypermedia Work: A User's Guide to HyTime," Kluwer Academic Publishers 1994 ().
References
External links
ISO/IEC 10744:1992 - Information technology -- Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime)- an amendment to ISO/IEC 10744:1997 Annex A.3
Standards: HyTime: A standard for structured hypermedia interchangeby
Charles Goldfarb, from IEEE ''Computer'' magazine, vol. 24, iss. 8 (Aug. 1991), pp. 81–84
A Brief History of the Development of SMDL and HyTime
Markup languages
XML
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