Cascading markup languages
– boom!

Håkon Wium Lie
CTO Opera Software
howcome@opera.com

A book microformat – boom!

• set of class names:
  • titlepage
  • table of contents
  • preface
  • chapter
  • appendix
  • ...
• semantics
  • borrows names from DocBook
• hooks for formatting
• a det of style sheets can be provided

Markup languages should be developed in the context of formatting languages, not the other way around

Why?

• having a formatter makes it possible to experiment
• it's harder to implement a formatter than a parser
• it's easier to change a markup language than a formatter
• one billion browsers provide a platform
• microformats are developed in the context of CSS