A Conversation with Charles F. Goldfarb
By Michael Floyd
It's widely known that when Tim Berners-Lee created HTML he based his hypertext publishing language on SGML -- Standard Generalized Markup Language. SGML was already an international standard, and it was being used to publish very large documents, such as airplane maintenance manuals. Now, with the emergence of eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Web developers are about to meet SGML head on.
SGML was invented by Charles F. Goldfarb, and it was he who coined the term "markup language." It all started in 1969 when Goldfarb, leading a small team at IBM, developed a language called GML. In 1974, he created SGML and subsequently wrote the first SGML parser, ARCSGML. Goldfarb would also work to turn SGML into the ISO 8879 standard, and serve as its editor.
With all the buzz surrounding XML, I recently sat down with the "Godfather of Markup," both to record some preWeb history and to gain some insights beyond the hype of XML. Goldfarb currently edits Prentice-Hall's "Definitive XML Series from Charles F. Goldfarb," and he has just released his latest book, The XML Handbook (coauthored by Paul Prescod). Goldfarb, a graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, holds the Graphic Communications Association's first International SGML Award, as well as the PIA Gutenberg Award. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Dr. Goldfarb, you led the project at IBM that invented SGML's precursor, GML. It's said that necessity is the mother of invention.
