Abstract
The trajectory of markup, indexing and labelling: the continuum via print publishing & libraries to Semantic Web & online games
The term 'mark up' was traditionally used by printers for annotating notes in hand written manuscripts to indicate style and layout. The logic and thinking associated with early print publishing and the ensuing distribution of published literature across distances was reliant on important concepts that continue to grow in the Internet environment. Mark up, indexing and labelling are significant concepts associated with early print media and library systems which have transformed into computing and led to a wide range of Internet applications. In a trajectory of technological innovations 'mark up' has uncanny similarities over time, firstly to convey visual and structural elements of documents for printers, and then for the Internet environment as instructions for layout. The initial purpose of the Hypertext Mark up Language (HTML) was to annotate visual layout and structural (logical) elements for Internet documents.
Many new forms of 'mark up' languages developed in the late 20th century, notably the Extensible Mark up Language (XML) changed dramatically the way people began to do business; generate news; and play, especially online and across continents. Contemporary mark up languages evolved from earlier non-digital systems that used labels and catalogues to assist the location and retrieval of information artefacts, notably using library classification systems and early mark up instructions for printers for the layout of newspapers and books. The modifications have produced new terms like 'metadata' and 'tags', but the principles to locate and retrieve information or digital objects are still shared purposes.
In the early 21st century mark up languages are used to express some forms of thinking and logic by defining sets of knowledge through entity relationships. This progress has been heavily dependent on indexical information and identification tags. Online games and online news sites also depend on precise vocabularies and classifications for objects so that they can be manipulated by either players or shared via syndication methods. The Semantic Web now enables new associations and references for multimedia objects, whilst location and retrieval remain important concepts still reliant upon indexing, labelling and text based mark up.
Cate Dowd
Charles Sturt University