NIST AUTHORS CONTRIBUTE TO ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMPUTER SCIENCE.The recently published Fourth Edition of the Encyclopedia of Computer Science contains articles by three NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. contributors. The encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work on computers, computing, and computer science. The article on "Markup Languages," explains what a markup language is and how it impacts work on the Web. Descriptions of several types of markup are included as well as methods to create markup. The article describes the origins of HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. , the Hypertext Markup Language (hypertext, World-Wide Web, standard) Hypertext Markup Language - (HTML) A hypertext document format used on the World-Wide Web. HTML is built on top of SGML. "Tags" are embedded in the text. A tag consists of a "<", a "directive" (in lower case), zero or more parameters and a ">". , currently the lingua franca of the Web that originated with SGML SGML in full Standard Generalized Markup Language Markup language for organizing and tagging elements of a document, including headings, paragraphs, tables, and graphics. , the Standard Generalized Markup Language (language, text) Standard Generalized Markup Language - (SGML) A generic markup language for representing documents. SGML is an International Standard that describes the relationship between a document's content and its structure. . SGML is also the basis for the Extensible Markup Language See XML. (language, text) Extensible Markup Language - (XML) An initiative from the W3C defining an "extremely simple" dialect of SGML suitable for use on the World-Wide Web. http://w3.org/XML/. (XML), which is now a driving technology for e-commerce and future Web standards. In addition, the article describes how markup can be used to create documents for use by persons with disabilities, making the Web accessible. The article on "Information Retrieval" details some of the basic principles behind today's search engines. The article describes some of the issues involved in indexing and searching electronic material, either gathered by a WebCrawler or as part of an in-house document collection, and points to areas of active research interest. Various types of retrieval applications are reviewed, along with discussion of some of the related legal and social issues raised by retrieval from open sources. The article entitled "Program Libraries, Numerical and Statistical," traces the long history of reusable software libraries developed by researchers and commercial ventures for science and engineering applications. It summarizes current frameworks for the packaging of general-purpose mathematical and statistical software components and indicates sources of both research-grade and commercially supported software libraries. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion