Marcin WicharyOnce in a while I imagine how much more pleasant HTML would be to type if only different brackets were originally chosen.
[div]
[p]
[a href=‘’][/a]
[/p]
[/div]
No single Shift press was necessary here.
Marcin WicharyNow curious exactly why SGML chose angle brackets! Would love to see a written statement. This is the closest I got to an answer, but it’s not really an answer.
https://www.xml.com/pub/a/w3j/s3.connolly.html
Marcin WicharyThis is from the standard, which I found online here: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/FIPS/fipspub152.pdf
(That footnote is prescient.)
There are references to an 1980 draft, but wonder if that would be explained there. There probably also also working group notes…
Marcin WicharyPoring over SGML Handbook from Goldfarb himself (Goldfarb is the “G” in GML).
SGML had some wild features!
https://archive.org/details/sgmlhandbook0000gold/
Marcin WicharyVery interesting! https://jtc1info.org/sd-2-history/jtc1-subcommittees/sc-34/
Not sure those are available online…
Marcin WicharyI sent some emails, but I am not sure if this is going to go anywhere. It’s wild that there isn’t an authoritative answer online, given how much of modern “online” uses HTML and angle brackets.
Marcin WicharyMore from the same person writing about “chicken scratches.” Includes a tantalizing cover page of a working document.
https://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol23/html/Mason01/BalisageVol23-Mason01.html
Marcin WicharyStill digging.
“To encourage acceptance, the authors of the SGML specification followed other design objectives: the ability to enter text and markup on "the millions of existing text entry devices"; no character set dependency; no national language bias; and markup usable by both humans and programs.”
https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000465.shtml
Marcin WicharyThanks to my emails but also people who were participating today, I got an email from one of the key players that sent me some great leads and info to investigate! (Including a PDF of the report I was salivating over earlier.)
It turns out the angle brackets are at most from 1979, if not earlier. More to research!
Marcin WicharyThis is the earliest appearance of < > I know of today, from 1979.
This thread might slow down, as next step will be some interlibrary requests!
Marcin WicharyThis might be more interesting. <P1> and <P2>! <#> for styling! Excited to dig and learn more.
Marcin WicharyThey are killing me. In the old article about the history of it that I just discovered, they are using… square brackets.
Marcin WicharyThey really are killing me.
Marcin WicharyFired some interlibrary requests. Wish me luck!
Marcin WicharyIs this going to go anywhere? Unclear. But I like this part.
Marcin WicharyI like scanning and putting up interlibrary stuff on Internet Archive.
This is the first one I got. Not sure yet if it’s going to help with the HTML bracket investigation, but maybe it’ll help someone else! https://archive.org/details/gca-standard-101-1983
Marcin WicharyBelieve it or not, I’m still figuring out where HTML got its angle brackets.
But despite grabbing a lot of interlibrary items, I am not sure I’m getting any closer. I still have some ideas, but one involves going to a museum in Maine, which might take a while.
However, good news (for someone?): There are now over 40 papers and books I scanned that deal with history of markup. Enjoy!
https://archive.org/details/wicharytypewriter?tab=collection&query=subject%3A%22markup%22