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Asked: 2026-06-02T21:02:34+00:00

This is a question I was wondering about for some time now, but couldn’t

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This is a question I was wondering about for some time now, but couldn’t quite find what I looked for on google.

What I’m wondering is, has there been any competitive markup language to X/HTML, that was essentially supposed to do the same job as HTML, but:

  • is rendered directly (without actually being compiled down to x/html)
  • is not just using a borrowed HTML-alike syntax (yes, I’m aware of SGML, which is widely known as the precursor of modern HTML)

The other thing is, I can see why HTML is popular: Its syntax is very easy to learn, no (overly awful) hidden black magic, it’s a straight away markup language that does exactly what it says on the tin.

When people think of markup languages, they usually think of HTML. Markdown is compiled to HTML, so is every wiki syntax semi-language. But there has got to be someone (or some company) who had a similar idea, and thusly tried to create a markup language that would fulfill similar, if not the same requirements.

I find it kind of hard to believe that there has never been any competitive markup language. Or has there really never been any?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Well, there’s Rich Text Format which, although as far as I know never developed to be written by hand, nevertheless is human readable:

    {\rtf1\ansi{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss Helvetica;}\f0\pard
This is some {\b bold} text.\par
}

    On the other hand, there’s PostScript which, while also being a Turing-complete programming language, is used to mark up documents.

    %!PS
/Courier             % name the desired font
20 selectfont        % choose the size in points and establish 
                     % the font as the current one
72 500 moveto        % position the current point at 
                     % coordinates 72, 500 (the origin is at the 
                     % lower-left corner of the page)
(Hello world!) show  % stroke the text in parentheses
showpage             % print all on the page

    I’m sure there are more languages in the same vein. Looking for related articles on Wikipedia, InterPress comes up, for instance.

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