In: computer, language.

Markup languages 📑

A markup language is a system for annotating a document in a way that is visually distinguishable from the content. It is used only to format the text, so that when the document is processed for display, the markup language does not appear.
The idea and terminology evolved from the “marking up” of paper manuscripts, which is traditionally written with a red pen or blue pencil on authors’ manuscripts. This typically includes both content corrections (such as spelling, punctuation, or movement of content), and also typographic instructions.
In digital media, this “blue pencil instruction text” was replaced by tags which ideally indicate what the parts of the document are, rather than details of how they might be shown. This lets authors avoid formatting every instance of the same kind of thing redundantly (and possibly inconsistently).

Examples of instructions are:

Types

Lightweight markup languages

The most interesting to me, in historical order:

µ markup languages

http://archieml.org
ArchieML makes it easy to write and edit structured text on deadline that could be rendered in web pages. Tag text as data, without having to type a lot of special characters. Similar with YAML.

http://criticmarkup.com
CriticMarkup, made for authors and editors to track changes to documents in plain text. Highlight insertions, deletions, substitutions and comments.

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/gemtext.gmi
Gemtext is a limited subset of Markdown.

https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll
Idyll: interactive narratives for the web. Create explorable explanations, write data-driven stories, and add interactivity to blogs.

https://github.com/jgm/djot
A light markup syntax inspired from Commonmark. It’s more than commonmark, with support for definition lists, footnotes, tables, several new kinds of inline formatting

https://github.com/jotaen/xit
plain-text file format for todos and check lists

https://github.com/markdoc/markdoc
Powerful, flexible, Markdown-based authoring framework

https://github.com/markmap/markmap
Visualize your Markdown as mindmaps

https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid
Mermaid: diagramming and charting tool with Markdown-inspired text definitions and a renderer to create and modify complex diagrams, written in Javascript.

https://github.com/nyousefi/Fountain
Fountain is a simple markup syntax that allows screenplays to be written, edited, and shared in plain, human-readable text

https://github.com/terrastruct/d2
D2 is a modern diagram scripting language that turns text to diagrams

https://github.com/typst/typst
Markup-based typesetting system that is designed to be as powerful as LaTeX while being much easier to learn and use.

https://github.com/vhyrro/neorg
Org-mode markup in NeoVIM using LUA

https://pointillistic.com/ren
Ren is a lightweight data-exchange text format. Programming language independent, with familiar conventions.

https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com
R Markdown documents are fully reproducible. Weave together narrative text and code to produce elegantly formatted output. Use multiple languages including R, Python, and SQL.

https://srackham.github.io/rimu/reference.html
Rimu is a readable-text to HTML markup language inspired by AsciiDoc and Markdown.

https://xit.jotaen.net
xit! is a plain-text file format for todos and check lists

Markdown editors

There’s a ton of them, this is just a short list:

Awesome

Links

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