science

Scribe (markup language)

Scribe (markup language) is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Scribe (markup language) rather than just read about it. In short: Scribe is a markup language and word processing system that innovated the use of descriptive markup. Scribe was notable when it was proposed, because it involved for the first time a clean separation of presentation and content.

Key takeaways

Scribe (markup language) belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Scribe (markup language) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Scribe (markup language) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Scribe is a markup language and word processing system that innovated the use of descriptive markup. Scribe was notable when it was proposed, because it involved for the first time a clean separation of presentation and content.

History

Beginnings Scribe was designed and developed by Brian Reid of Carnegie Mellon University. It formed the subject of his 1980 doctoral dissertation, for which he received the Association for Computing Machinery's Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1982. Reid presented a paper describing Scribe in the same conference session in 1981 in which Charles Goldfarb presented GML (developed in 1969), the immediate predecessor of SGML.

Sale to Unilogic In 1979, at the end of his graduate-student career, Reid sold Scribe to a Pittsburgh-area software company called Unilogic (later renamed Scribe Systems), founded by Michael Shamos, another Carnegie Mellon computer scientist, to market the program. Reid said he simply was looking for a way to unload the program on developers that would keep it from going into the public domain. Michael Shamos was embroiled in a dispute with Carnegie Mellon administrators over the intellectual-property rights to Scribe. The dispute with the administration was settled out of court, and the university conceded it had no claim to Scribe.

Time-bomb Reid agreed to insert a set of time-dependent functions (called "time bombs") that would deactivate freely copied versions of the program after a 90-day expiration date. To avoid deactivation, users paid the software company, which then issued a code that defused the internal time-bomb feature. Richard Stallman saw this as a betrayal of the programmer ethos. Instead of honoring the notion of "share-and-share alike", Reid had inserted a way for companies to compel programmers to pay for information access. Stallman's Texinfo is "loosely based on Brian Reid's Scribe and other formatting languages of the time".

Using the Scribe word processor Using Scribe involved a two-step process:

The writer would type up a manuscript file that conformed to Scribe's syntax. This file would be processed through the Scribe compiler to generate an associated document file, which could be printed. The Scribe markup language defined words, lines, pages, spacing, headings, footings, footnotes, numbering, tables of contents, etc. in a manner similar to HTML. The Scribe compiler used a database of styles containing document format definitions. Because of the separation of concerns between the content (structure) of the document and its style (format), writers did not need to concern themselves with the details of formatting.

The markup language The idea of using markup language, in which meta-information about the document and its formatting were contained within the document itself, first saw widespread use in a program called RUNOFF; Scribe contained the first robust implementation of declarative markup language. In Scribe, markup was introduced with an @ sign, followed either by a Begin-End block or by a direct token invocation:

It was also possible to pass parameters: @MakeSection(tag=beginning, title="The Beginning"). Typically, large documents were composed of Chapters, with each chapter in a separate file. These files were then referenced by a master document file, thereby concatenating numerous components into a single large source document. The master file typically also defined styles (such as fonts and margins) and declared macros like MakeSection shown above; macros had limited programmatic features. From that single concatenated source, Scribe computed chapter numbers, page numbers, and cross-references. These processes replicate features in later markup languages like HTML. Placing styles in a separate file gave some advantages like Cascading Style Sheets, and programmed macros presaged the document manipulation aspects of JavaScript.

Related software The FinalWord word processor from Mark of the Unicorn, which became Borland's Sprint, featured a markup language which resembled a simplified version of Scribe's. Before being packaged as FinalWord, earlier versions of the editor and formatter had been sold separately as MINCE ("MINCE Is Not Complete Emacs") and Scribble respectively. LaTeX extends TeX with the descriptive markup ideas of Scribe. The Ada Reference Manual is written in a Scribe-like format, which is transformed into plain text, HTML, and PDF documents via a formatting tool.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Scribe (markup language)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Scribe (markup language) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Scribe (markup language) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Scribe (markup language) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Scribe (markup language)

In research: Scribe (markup language) appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Scribe (markup language) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Scribe (markup language) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Markup languages, Word processors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Scribe (markup language) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Scribe (markup language) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Scribe (markup language) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Scribe (markup language) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Scribe (markup language) in simple terms?

Why does Scribe (markup language) matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Scribe (markup language)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Scribe (markup language).