is a Japanese

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, Ph.D. in engineering, and Project Professor at

Keio University , mottoeng = The pen is mightier than the sword , type = Private research coeducational higher education institution , established = 1858 , founder = Yukichi Fukuzawa , endowmen ...

. He participated in the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

(World Wide Web Consortium)

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 ...

Working Group. The Working Group designed XML1.0, 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 ...

specification. Murata and James Clark designed

RELAX NG In computing, RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation) is a schema language for XML—a RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. A RELAX NG schema is itself an XML document but RELAX NG also ...

, an XML schema language. Murata is the convener of

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 El ...

WG 4, responsible for

Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...

maintenance.

Work

XML1.0 and XML Japanese Profile

In 1997, Murata participated in

(World Wide Web Consortium)

Working Group.

Jon Bosak Jon Bosak led the creation of the XML specification at the W3C. From 1996–2008, he worked for Sun Microsystems. XML Tim Bray, who was one of the editors of the XML specification, has this to say in his note on Bosak in his annotated version o ...

, James Clark and

Tim Bray Timothy William Bray (born June 21, 1955) is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the original XML specification. He worked for Amazon Web Services from December 2014 until May 2020 whe ...

were also members of the group. The Working Group designed XML1.0 specification. XML1.0 is a

and a subset 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 ...

. XML1.0 became a W3C Recommendation in February 1998. Murata and collaborators authored XML Japanese Profile, the issues of using

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

characters in XML documents. XML Japanese Profile became a JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) Technical Report. XML Japanese Profile was translated into English and published as a W3C Technical Report.

XML Media Types

Murata is one of the authors of

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

RFC 2376 XML Media Types. The

RFC RFC may refer to: Computing * Request for Comments, a memorandum on Internet standards * Request for change, change management * Remote Function Call, in SAP computer systems * Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, a modification for Sid Meier's Civ ...

specifies XML media types for use in exchanging XML data via

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

(text/xml and application/xml). RFC 2376 was revised as RFC 3023.

RELAX and RELAX NG

Some people, including Murata and James Clark, had critical attitudes toward

XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of Extensible Markup Language, XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed ...

. XML Schema is a modern XML schema language designed by

XML Schema Working Group. W3C intended XML Schema to supersede traditional DTD (Document Type Definition). XML Schema supports so many features that its specification is large and complex. Murata, James Clark and those who criticised XML Schema, pointed out the following: * It is difficult to implement all features of XML Schema. * It is difficult for engineers to read and write XML Schema definitions. * It does not permit nondeterministic content models. Murata and collaborators designed another modern schema language,

RELAX Relax may refer to: Aviation * Roland Z-120 Relax, a German ultralight aircraft design for the 120 kg class Music Albums * ''Relax'' (Blank & Jones album), 2003 * ''Relax'' (Das Racist album), 2011 Songs * "Relax" (song), a 1983 song by Fran ...

(Regular Language description for XML), more simple and mathematically consistent. They published RELAX specification in 2000. RELAX was approved as JIS and

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

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 ...

standards. At roughly the same time, James Clark also designed another schema language, TREX (Tree Regular Expressions for XML). Murata and James Clark designed a new schema language

based on TREX and RELAX Core. RELAX NG syntax is the expansion of TREX. RELAX NG was approved by

OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

in December 2001. RELAX NG was also approved as Part 2 of ISO/IEC 19757:

Document Schema Definition Languages Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) is a framework within which multiple validation tasks of different types can be applied to an XML document in order to achieve more complete validation results than just the application of a single techn ...

(DSDL).

Enhancement of EPUB for Japanese Text Layout

In April 2010, Murata made a presentation at JEPA on 14-itemized requirements as extended Japanese-language-related specifications to be incorporated into

EPUB EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for ''electronic publication'' and is sometimes styled ''ePub''. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones ...

. When East Co., Ltd. started working on the project of EPUB enhancement for Japanese Text Layout, sponsored by the

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications The is a cabinet-level ministry in the Government of Japan. Its English name was Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT) prior to 2004. It is housed in the 2nd Building of the Central Common Government Of ...

of the Japanese Government, Murata assumed the project's technical responsibilities, and by jointly working with

Tatsuo Kobayashi is a Japanese web architect who specializes in international standardization. Born and raised in Tokyo, he studied history and philosophy of science at the University of Tokyo. After graduating from the university, he joined Shogakukan Inc. an ...

, ''et al.'', he called for other browser developers/owners, to take in the enhanced

, or support Japanese Text Layout, including

vertical writing Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese Hán- Nôm and Korean scripts can be oriented along either axis, as they consist mainly of disconnected logographic or syllabic units, each occu ...

, line breaking rules and emphasis dots. Murata is a coordinator of Enhanced Global Language Support (EGLS) for the US-based International Digital Publishing Forum ( IDPF), developer and promoter of

Career

In 1982, Murata received his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

from the Faculty of Science,

Kyoto University , mottoeng = Freedom of academic culture , established = , type = National university, Public (National) , endowment = ¥ 316 billion (2.4 1000000000 (number), billion USD) , faculty = 3,480 (Teaching Staff) , administrative_staff ...

.
In 1985, he joined

Fuji Xerox was a joint venture partnership between the Japanese photographic firm Fujifilm Holdings and the American document management company Xerox to develop, produce and sell xerographic and document-related products and services in the Asia-Pacifi ...

.
From 1993 to 1995, he researched

structured document A structured document is an electronic document where some method of markup is used to identify the whole and parts of the document as having various meanings beyond their formatting. For example, a structured document might identify a certain por ...

s at

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

Webster Research Center.
As of 1997, he worked at Fuji Xerox Information Systems on lease from Fuji Xerox.
In 2000, he left Fuji Xerox.
Since 2000, he has researched at

International University of Japan The is a private university located in Minamiuonuma city in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. IUJ is the first graduate university in Japan, not offering undergraduate degrees, and one of the few Japanese universities which offers all courses in En ...

.
From 2000 to May 2008, he also researched at IBM

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Research Laboratory.
Since September 2008, he has been a Fellow of the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), the International University of Japan.
July 2006, Murata obtained the doctor's degree in engineering from Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering of the University of Tsukuba.
In November 2009, he assumed the position of Technical Lead at Japan Electronic Publishing Association (JEPA) and has since been leading the EPUB Research Team of JEPA.
Since 2010, Murata has been a Vice Chairman of IVS Technology Promotion Council.

Books

* 村田真(編著), 門馬敦仁, 荒井恭一, 『XML入門 HTMLの限界を打ち破るインターネットの新技術』, 日本経済新聞社, January 1998, * Hiroshi Maruyama, Kent Tamura, Naohiko Uramoto, Makoto Murata, Andy Clark, Yuichi Nakamura, Ryo Neyama, Kazuya Kosaka and Satoshi Hada, ''XML and Java: Developing Web Applications, Second Edition'', Addison-Wesley Professional, May 2002, :: 丸山宏, 田村健人, 浦本直彦, 村田真, アンディ・クラーク, 中村祐一, 根山亮, 小坂一也, 羽田知史 (著・訳), 『XMLとJavaによるWebアプリケーション開発第2版』, ピアソンエデュケーション, December 2002, Additionally, Murata authored some papers on