Nowadays, the world of computers and edition is changing a lot. It is difficult to follow their rhythm and we sometimes feel confused. That is why we are going to introduce a bit into this world explaining some markup languages and their characteristics. For instance, these languages are used by users to communicate with computers. For example, while you are doing a document there are many things that you have to consider such as the format, style… It is thanks to markup languages that computers know how you exactly want to present the document or text.
There are many markup languages and every single one is used for different purposes. Moreover, they are used in the edition and communication industries by authors, editors and printers. TeX, LaTeX, HTML, SGML, troff are some of the most important. TeX was created by Donald Knuth and it is very popular in the academic industry. Specially, mathematicians, physicists and technicians like it. It is said that is better than troff. However, it must be said that both TeX and troff can only be used in Unix which is a software whose aim is to be the channel between the hardware and the programs used by computers users.
Another important markup language is LaTeX written by the engineer Leslie Lamport. Normally, it is used for creating books and scientific documents which have mathematic technicalities. LaTeX has many TeX macros that allow to analyze a complex instruction by analyzing first easy instructions. Macros are extemely important in markup languages.
Leslie Lamport
In conclusion, our use of computers will not be the same without the existance of these languages. Our work is more easy thanks to them. Imagine editing a book without the help of a markup language, itwould be like a nightmare and we would have to work a lot for finishing the work. I completely admire persons like Leslie Lamport or Donald Knuth who have managed to make our lives easier.
References:
- TeX (2010, June, 15) In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:00, June 26, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX
- Welcome to UK-TUG (2010) In Uk.Tuk.org. Retrieved 13: 12, June 26, 2010, from http://uk.tug.org/
- TeX for the Impatient ( 2003, September, 9) Retrieved 13:56,June 26, 2010, from ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/dante/info/impatient/book.pdf
- LaTeX – A document preparation system (2010, January, 10) In LaTeX- Project. Retrieved 14:16, June 26, 2010, from http://www.latex-project.org/
