Charles F. Goldfarb is known as the father of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and grandfather of

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 JavaScri ...

and the World Wide Web. He co-invented the concept of

markup languages 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 ...

. In 1969 Charles Goldfarb, leading a small team at IBM, developed the first markup language, called

Generalized Markup Language Generalized Markup Language (GML) is a set of macros that implement intent-based (procedural) markup tags for the IBM text formatter, SCRIPT. SCRIPT/VS is the main component of IBM's Document Composition Facility (DCF). A ''starter set'' of ...

, or GML. Goldfarb coined the term GML, an

initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for the three researchers, Charles Goldfarb, Ed Mosher and Ray Lorie who worked on the project. In 1974, he designed SGML and subsequently wrote the first SGML parser, ARCSGML. Goldfarb went on working to turn SGML into the ISO 8879 standard, and served as its editor in the standardization committee. Goldfarb holds a J.D. from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. He worked at IBM's

Almaden Research Center IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...

for many years and is now an independent consultant based in

Belmont, California Belmont is a city in San Mateo County in the U.S. state of California. It is in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the San Francisco Peninsula about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. Known for its wooded hills, views of the San Franci ...

Selected publications

*The SGML Handbook, Oxford University Press (1991), *SGML Buyer's Guide, Prentice Hall (1998), *XML Handbook, Prentice Hall (1998),

References

External links

Charles F. Goldfarb's SGML Homepage
Harvard Law School alumni IBM employees Markup languages Living people Year of birth missing (living people) People from Belmont, California {{US-compu-bio-stub