Stone Markup Languages

Hello Protocols, Packets, and Programs – and Ptolemaic subjects,

On this day of the year 196 BC, King Ptolemy V of Egypt decreed no taxes to keep his people happy.

We know this because of a large stone language model – the Rosetta Stone, that contained hieroglyphics, demotic (a cursive hieroglyphics), and Greek.

Of course, cuneiform was the original stone markup language, dating back to 3,500 BC.

It was eventually standardized into SGML in 1986.

And that in turn led to the equally ancient HTML, dating back to 1993.

So today, whatever language model or markup language you use,

Leave some documentation for the future.

I also riffed on markup languages back in 2011 and 2012 when I was looking at the changes HTML5 was introducing.


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