HTML : Introduction
Stands for ...
HyperText Markup Language
Sounds like SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)...
Abbreviation of Standard Generalized Markup Language,
a system for organizing and tagging elements of a document. SGML was developed
and standardized by the International Organization for Standards (ISO). SGML
itself does not specify any particular formatting; rather, it specifies the
rules for tagging elements. These tags can then be interpreted to format elements
in different ways.
Source:
http://info.borland.com/techpubs/books/vbj/vbj40/programmers-guide/glossary.html
Visual vs Logical formatting of text/ideas : logical structure
Origins in CERN ( Tim Berners-Lee : a collaboration tool )
First GUI web browser was NCSA Mosaic
Later driven by Netscape and Microsoft IE
Standard published by W3C
HTML is the lingua franca for publishing hypertext
on the World Wide Web. It is a non-proprietary format based upon SGML, and can
be created and processed by a wide range of tools, from simple plain text editors
- you type it in from scratch- to sophisticated WYSIWYG authoring tools. HTML
uses tags such as <h1> and </h1> to structure text into headings,
paragraphs, lists, hypertext links etc.
Source: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
Reference : Web Wizard's Guide to HTML