Creating Markup

[admin]

Ok, ya'll. I do find that XML in quite interesting and useful. I have heard for a great long while that XML is a markup language for making markup languages. To me, that doesnt make any darn sense. I do see that XML can be quite handy and has enormous potential... the ways it can be applied are countless. But heres what I dont get... How does one actually create a markup language. Sure, I know, in an XML document I create my own tags, my own attributes... sure, whatever, thats all fine and good and all. Thats what XML is for, describing information, right? But... my all-original tags dont do jack without some sort of parser or stylesheet to back it up. Without those, my very own "markup language" is useless. So, naturally, my markup wont mark anything up in other peoples browsers unless they have access to the same files I had access to when I designed it. HTML is a markup language... it truely is... those tags are pre-defined, programmed into someones browser, and pages comes to life. The way I see it, your homemade markup isnt really markup because it still relies on all the other predefined markup thats already floating around in order to give it any meaning. Am I wrong? Where do you draw the line between a real form of a markup language (where a browser knows what to do) and simply any old code/file that you interpret and convert in order to display in a browser? Whats what is what Im saying. I know, this is probably borderline philosophical and undoubtedly rediculous. Convince me that your made up language isnt just something that I can use, but that it is an actual independant markup language. Perhaps I am truly way off base here and am lacking some serious technical knowledge. Please, correct me.