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Markup and Content

XML

The markup format underneath most modern documentation standards, where structure is explicit and can be validated against a schema.

Definition

What XML Means

XML stands for

Extensible Markup Language

XML makes structure explicit and checkable. A heading is tagged as a heading, a warning as a warning, and a machine can verify that a document contains what it is required to contain.

That is why technical publications standards are built on it. When a manual outlives the software that wrote it, which in defense is routine, a vendor-neutral validated format is the only thing that survives the transition.

Also written: extensible markup language

Nearby

Related Terms

SGML

The markup framework that taught aerospace and defense to structure documents, and the ancestor XML simplified and replaced.

XSD

The modern schema language: written in XML itself, namespace-aware, and able to declare that a value must be a date or a bounded number.

DTD

The older grammar mechanism declaring which elements and attributes a document may contain, inherited from SGML and still cited by contracts.

DITA

An open XML architecture for topic-based technical content, built around typed topics, maps that assemble them, and specialization.

All 64 terms in the glossary

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Beyond the Definition

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