in which connections are made—GML to SGML to HTML

In the mid-1980s, I spent 18 months as an editorial assistant at IBM. My job was to code data for technical manuals and users guides using IBM GML. I long since dropped it off my resumé because, (1) when I included it, no one seemed to know what it was and (2) coding was never a part of my subsequent job responsibilities.

In the mid-1990s, I created a web page like everyone else. I used a WYSIWYG editor (my more techie friends rolled their eyes and admonished me, "it creates sloppy code!") with occasional forays—with the assistance of a Dummies book (Web Pages for Dummies? HTML for Dummies?)—into the source code, which I found incredibly easy to understand. I don't recall if I found the ease with which I grasped HTML to be surprising or par for the course.

Around 2002, I started a blog and picked up more HTML tags. Again I found them easy, but this time I connected them to the GML I'd used back at IBM. Well, I thought, ML stands for markup language, so I guess all markup languages have the same base codes. Little did I suspect how right I was.

Today, I read the HTML entry in wikipedia. I learned that HTML was based in SGML. Huh, that sounds familiar, I thought. So I did a little research and yes, SGML was based on IBM GML. Ha, I've been preparing for the web revolution since the '80s!