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 positi ...
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 des ...
, which is a general-purpose markup language.
List
Notable general-purpose markup languages include:
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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)
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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/ ...
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LML - general-purpose markup language for expressing markdown, variables, and expressions for machine-readable and executable legal documentation
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GML - the predecessor 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 des ...
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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 des ...
- 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 ...
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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
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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 Exte ...
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GLML - General-purpose Legal Markup Language
See also
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Comparison of document markup languages The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of document markup languages. Please see the individual markup languages' articles for further information.
General information
Basic general information about the marku ...
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General-purpose language
A general-purpose language is a computer language that is broadly applicable across application domains, and lacks specialized features for a particular domain. This is in contrast to a domain-specific language (DSL), which is specialized to a par ...
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General-purpose modeling language
General-purpose modeling (GPM) is the systematic use of a General-purpose language, general-purpose modeling language to represent the various facets of an object (philosophy), object or a system. Examples of GPM languages are:
* The Unified Model ...
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General-purpose programming language
In computer software, a general-purpose programming language (GPL) is a programming language for building software in a wide variety of application domains. Conversely, a domain-specific programming language is used within a specific area. For exam ...
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S-expression
In computer programming, an S-expression (or symbolic expression, abbreviated as sexpr or sexp) is an expression in a like-named notation for nested list (tree-structured) data. S-expressions were invented for and popularized by the programming la ...
{{Markup languages
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Data serialization formats