hypertext markup language
n : a set of tags and rules (conforming to SGML) for using them
in developing hypertext documents [syn: {hypertext
mark-up language}, {HTML}]
Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) A {hypertext}
document format used on the {World-Wide Web}. HTML is built
on top of {SGML}. "Tags" are embedded in the text. A tag
consists of a "<", a "directive" (case insensitive), zero or
more parameters and a ">". Matched pairs of directives, like
"" and " " are used to delimit text which is to
appear in a special place or style.
Links to other documents are in the form
foo
where "A" and "/A" delimit an "anchor", "HREF" introduces a
hypertext reference, which is most often a {Uniform Resource
Locator} (URL) (the string in double quotes in the example
above). The link will be represented in the browser by the
text "foo" (typically shown underlined and in a different
colour).
A certain place within an HTML document can be marked with a
named anchor, e.g.:
The "fragment identifier", "baz", can be used in an HREF by
appending "#baz" to the document name.
Other common tags include for a new paragraph, ..
for bold text,
for an unnumbered list,
for
preformated text, , .. for headings.
{HTML} supports some standard {SGML} {national characters} and
other non-{ASCII} characters through special {escape
sequences}, e.g. "é" for a lower case 'e' with an acute
accent. You can sometimes get away without the terminating
semicolon but it's bad style.
The {World-Wide Web Consortium} (W3C) is the international
{standards} body for HTML.
Latest version: {XHTML} 1.0, as of 2000-09-10.
{Home (http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/)}.
{Character escape sequences
(http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/ISOlat1.html)}.
See also {weblint}.
(2000-09-10)