Writing structured and semantics-oriented documents: TeX vs. XML

Abstract

Using XML-like syntax for documents gives them a tree structure, inducing a notion of structured document. Defining domain-dependent tags introduces a notion of semantics-oriented writing. These two points result in a new view about document production. In fact, they have already existed within TeX, but in another shape. This article aims to point out these notions and the differences between them. It ends with some proposals about the evolution of the tools belonging to TeX's world.