Text Encoding Initiative: Background and Context

Charles F. Goldfarb Saratoga. California If asked for a sure recipe for chaos I would propose a I am delighted that my invention, the Standard project in which several thousand impassioned special- Generalized Markup Language, was able to play a ists in scores of disciplines from a dozen or more role in the TEl's magnificent accomplishment, particu- countries would be given five years to produce some larly because almost all of the original applications 1300 pages of guidelines for representing the informa- of SGML were in the commercial and technological tion models of their specialties in a rigorous, machine- realms. It is reasonable, of course, that organiza- verifiable notation. Clearly, it would be sociologically tions with massive economic investments in new and and technologically impossible for such a group even changing information should want the benefits of infor- to agree on the subject matter of such guidelines, let mation asset preservation and reuse that SGML offers. alone the coding details. But just as clearly as the It is gratifying that the TEl, representing the guardians bumblebee flies despite the laws of aerodynamics, the of humanity's oldest and most truly valuable informa- Text Encoding Initiative has actually succeeded in such tion, chose SGML for those same benefits. an effort. The vaunted "information superhighway" would The TEl Guidelines are extraordinary.