Thinking in Markup

Yep, so wait. What is Markup? Well if you happen to follow the links on this blog (and you really are safer if you don't), Wikipedia catagorizes...or lists it into 3 distinct groups:

1. Presentational Markup: Which happens to be the XML-y type stuff that Word and other word processors use. In addition, this style of markup is seldomly seen by the end user.
2. Procedural Markup: What we will be focusing on. This style of markup IS seen by the user and is sprinkled(be ware the Wizard) throughout the text. A preprocessor comes along, reads the text and hands the styled text back to the user.
3. Descriptive Markup: This form is sprinkled throughout the text, much like the Procedural form; however, it has no bearing on a preprocessor. A good example of this is the hashtag(#tag) syntax that some of us use on Twitter AppDotNet to catagorize our updates.

Yes, until Dalton comes to his senses and realizes that he has a cool project with a dumb name, it will be written that way.

What we are talking about here is a light language (sometimes called "DSLs") that is used to express oneself beyond text. Anyone not see the beauty in that? The user gets a free ride by using text documents that are generated with style, flare and that never expire (text documents wont be going out of style anytime soon).

Many of us, myself included have flocked to the lovable Markdown. Originally it was used to style documents for web viewing; however, now it has bleed into many text editors, iPhone and Android editors, and it is still fairly prevalent when it comes to web based writing. I have become so accustomed to the syntax, and incorporated its usage into so many applications that my brain now thinks on Markdown.

What Markup language do you think in?