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 markup languages: creator, version, etc.

! Creator ! First public release date ! Latest stable version ! Editor ! Viewer
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| DocBook	Norman Walsh	?	4.4	?	? (For printing)
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| HTML	Tim Berners-Lee	1993	4.01	Text editor, HTML editor	Web browser
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| MathML	W3C	July 1999	2.0	Text editor, TeX converter	Web browser, Word processor
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| RTF	Microsoft	1987	1.8	Text editor, Word processor	Word processor
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| TeX	Donald Knuth	1978	3.141592	Text editor	DVI or PDF converter
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| XHTML	W3C	January 26, 2000	1.1	Text editor, HTML editor	Web browser
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| WML	WAP Forum	?	2.0	Text editor	Microbrowser
! Creator ! First public release date ! Latest stable version ! Editor ! Viewer

Characteristics

Some characteristics of the markup languages.

style="width:10em;" \|	style="width:5em;" \| Major purpose	style="width:5em;" \| Based on	style="width:5em;" \| Markup type	style="width:5em;" \| Structural markup	style="width:5em;" \| Presentational markup ¹
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| DocBook	Technical document	SGML / XML	Tag	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#fcfcfc" \| ?
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| HTML	Hypertext document	SGML	Tag	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| MathML	Mathematical document	XML	Tag	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#ffdddd" \| No
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| RTF	Rich text document	Control code	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| TeX	Academic document	Control code	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| XHTML	Hypertext document	XML	Tag	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#ffdddd" \| No
style="text-align:left;" bgcolor="#ececec" \| WML	Hypertext document	XML	Tag	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes	bgcolor="#ddffdd" \| Yes
! Major purpose ! Based on ! Markup type ! Structural markup ! Presentational markup

Note (1): Many markup languages have purposely avoided presentational markups. For markup languages based on SGML and XML, CSS is used as a presentation layer.

Comparison Of Document Markup Languages

General information

Characteristics

See also