HyTime (''Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language'') is a

markup language A markup language is a Encoding, text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate au ...

that is an application of

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; International Organization for Standardization, ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on t ...

. HyTime defines a set of

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

-oriented element types that, in effect, supplement SGML and allow SGML document authors to build hypertext and multimedia presentations in a standardized way. HyTime is an international standard published by the

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

and IEC. The first edition was published in 1992, and the second edition was published in 1997.

Legacy

Some of the concepts formalized in HyTime were later incorporated into

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

: * HTML is an application of SGML for

document presentations, that assigns specific semantics and processing expectations to a fixed set of element types. * XML defines a simplified subset of SGML that focuses on providing an open vocabulary of element types for

data modeling Data modeling in software engineering is the process of creating a data model for an information system by applying certain formal techniques. It may be applied as part of broader Model-driven engineering (MDE) concept. Overview Data modeli ...

and establishes precise expectations for how the marked-up data is read and subsequently fed to another software application for further processing, but does not assign semantics to the element types or establish expectations for how the data is processed. * XLink was intended as a simplified version of HyTime for use in the XML world, but has not seen much adoption. * Work on applying HyTime to back-of-book indexes eventually led to the development of

Topic Maps A topic map is a standard for the representation and interchange of knowledge, with an emphasis on the findability of information. Topic maps were originally developed in the late 1990s as a way to represent back-of-the-book index structures ...

, which eventually became far more successful in its own right than HyTime ever was.

Standard

The HyTime standard itself is ISO/IEC 10744, first published in 1992 and available from the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. M ...

. It was developed by

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, Document description and processing languages is a subcommittee of the ISO/IEC JTC 1 joint technical committee, which is a collaborative effort of both the International Organization for Standardization and the International El ...

(ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 34 - Document description and processing languages).

References

External links

ISO/IEC 10744:1992 - Information technology -- Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime)

- an amendment to ISO/IEC 10744:1997 Annex A.3
Standards: HyTime: A standard for structured hypermedia interchange
by

Charles Goldfarb Charles F. Goldfarb, (born November 26, 1939) is known as the father of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and grandfather of HTML and the World Wide Web. He co-invented the concept of markup languages. In 1969 Charles Goldfarb, leading ...

, from IEEE ''Computer'' magazine, vol. 24, iss. 8 (Aug. 1991), pp. 81–84
A Brief History of the Development of SMDL and HyTime
{{Authority control Markup languages XML SGML

Legacy

Standard

Further reading

References

External links