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an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language
for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based
information in a document — by denoting certain text as links, headings,
paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive
forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of tags,
surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the
appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting
language code (such as JavaScript) which can affect the behavior of Web browsers
and other HTML processors. HTML is also often used to refer to content in
specific languages, such as a MIME type text/html, or even more broadly as a
generic term for HTML, whether in its XML-descended form (such as XHTML 1.0 and
later) or its form descended directly from SGML (such as HTML 4.01 and earlier).
By convention, HTML format data files use a file extension .html or .htm.
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In 1980, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, who was an independent contractor at CERN,
proposed and prototyped ENQUIRE, a system for CERN researchers to use and share
documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau
each submitted separate proposals for an Internet-based hypertext system
providing similar functionality. The following year, they collaborated on a
joint proposal, the WorldWideWeb (W3) project, which was accepted by CERN.
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The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called HTML
Tags, first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991. It describes
22 elements comprising the initial, relatively simple design of HTML. Thirteen
of these elements still exist in HTML 4. Berners-Lee considered HTML to be, at
the time, an application of SGML, but it was not formally defined as such until
the mid-1993 publication, by the IETF, of the first proposal for an HTML
specification: Berners-Lee and Dan Connolly's "Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)"
Internet-Draft, which included an SGML Document Type Definition to define the
grammar. The draft expired after six months, but was notable for its
acknowledgment of the NCSA Mosaic browser's custom tag for embedding in-line
images, reflecting the IETF's philosophy of basing standards on successful
prototypes. Similarly, Dave Raggett's competing Internet-Draft, "HTML+
(Hypertext Markup Format)", from late 1993, suggested standardizing
already-implemented features like tables and fill-out forms. After the HTML and
HTML+ drafts expired in early 1994, the IETF created an HTML Working Group,
which in 1995 completed "HTML 2.0", the first HTML specification intended to be
treated as a standard against which future implementations should be based.
Published as Request for Comments 1996, HTML 2.0 included ideas from the HTML
and HTML+ drafts. There was no "HTML 1.0"; the 2.0 designation was intended to
distinguish the new edition from previous drafts. Further development under the
auspices of the IETF was stalled by competing interests. Since 1996, the HTML
specifications have been maintained, with input from commercial software
vendors, by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). However, in 2000, HTML also
became an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000). The last HTML
specification published by the W3C is the HTML 4.01 Recommendation, published in
late 1999. Its issues and errors were last acknowledged by errata published in
2001.
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