Chapter 2: What is STxT?

This chapter may seem a little unfocused, but they are my reflections when creating STxT. Please forgive me if I repeat myself a bit, if you don't understand what I am saying, or if it seems an incoherent speech. But this is the way it is. It has been written to the best of my abilities, on different days, but always using it as the basis of creation.

The other chapters are The Perspiration.

Glance quickly over this chapter, and read it more in depth when you already know more about STxT. This is good advice ;-)

What is STxT?

It is a purely semantic language, with some very basic rules, which allows the creation of documents with structured and easy to interpret content, by both humans and machines. You could be reading a document in STxT without actually realizing that it is.

STxT: A language for the web. It does not mean one more, one more among many. It means ONE language for the web. Just one. And many at the same time. As many as you want. This is my proposal.

STxT is a language for writing structured documents. It lets us create documents in a non-ambiguous way, adhering to very precise rules, but achieving documents that can be read by people that are not computer literate.

In fact, the documents have meaning by themselves, without needing any additional translation. They have a hierarchical structure that is very similar to xml documents, and their translation can be direct.

In the future, STxT could replace other technologies such as xml or LaTex.

Statement of Intent :-)

There are a number of principles or features that we want this new language to have.

• Independent from the programming language, operating system, and platform
• Easy to read by humans without computer skills
• Easy to learn by humans without computer skills
• Nice appearance and intuitive
• Encourages the freedom of movement and sharing of information
• Easy to learn by humans with computer skills
• Easy to interpret by computers
• It allows for the easy integration of texts from other programming languages, especially "lightweight languages", which are particularly interesting. This way, we achieve a very interesting integration.
• Native internationalization (I18N) capabilities
• Native self-description capabilities
• Enable the creation of content trees which are capable of distinguishing very easily between different languages
• Be generic in order to include documents in other languages
• Simplify so much that escape characters are not necessary. As a matter of fact, there are no escape characters!! Is that possible? Yes. I believe that it is the first language that can say this :-D It does so through its structure and content. There is only one forbidden character, but it is not an escape character. You’ll see, I have already expanded too much on this point...

What does STxT mean?

Well, originally STxT means "Semantic text". Although it could also have other meanings, that I particularly like: SuperText and SexyText.

• SuperText: it is text, but super :-D
• SexyText: it is particularly beautiful text ;-)

How did I choose the STxT extension? I was sure that documents had to be semantic, so there was something that had to have "semantic". In addition, languages with few letters in them are “in” now: xml, tex, html, xsd,... so stxt seemed to me like a good choice. I just needed to check that this was not being used already, so looking through the Internet I only remotely found another meaning: sexy-text. Well, even that was good, semantic text has to be sexy ;-)

Why a new language?

I have always believed that we needed a simple language for writing texts, but that was at same time powerful as far as structure is concerned. And I had not found it... until now.

I think the problem that has always existed is that one always tries to solve the general case, and this complicates things. But in addition it has been dealt with the wrong way, always taking into account the syntax point of view, looking for a computer approach, never a semantic one.

Make no mistake. I am a computer tech. But sometimes you have to see things from the other side, with a 'clean' view. In fact it is a balance between learning from what you know and trying to think as if you didn't know anything about it.

Another objective is to make the information open. This has also been addressed during the design phase. By design, the content is open.

A language for everyone

We try to make it easy for everyone. There should not be problems for "non-computer people" when having to create a semantic document. It should be intuitive, and simple, with the right tools.

One of the goals is to go from having 1 relatively complicated language for doing things (e.g.: XML, Latex,...) to having very simple n, with content linked to a structure. This language needs to be able to be learned in a very short time. Almost with one example we should have enough. STxT is made so that it is this way. In addition, STxT lets us pass from STxT to other languages, such as latex, so that the more technical people can do the final work. But the origin and the base will always be STxT.

It is much better that it is this way, as we write in pure semantics, without taking into account structure at all.

When I began creating this language I was looking for something very generic but that was descriptive at the same time. I wanted the information to be very clear, but I wanted to forget the complex grammars from other systems. I wanted something accessible, but at the same time powerful and useful. That is why I had to look for simplicity, and keep away from the majority of other work already carried out. My intention was to create a language not just for elite people, but for everyone. I also knew that this would be beneficial, because this way the number of people willing to create documents would increase considerably. There is a tremendous amount of people with great knowledge, but sometimes they are limited by the way they have to translate this information. I also intend to solve this problem.

Chaotic Statement of Intent :-D (**)

Well, all this is what we were looking for, or what we have achieved, or the objective, or a mixture of all these things. I don't know, they are scattered ideas, which have been out there during its creation and I wanted you to see, nothing else. There is nothing to be understood from this list. You have to wait until the end of the book, and see what has been achieved, what hasn’t, and if we have gained something... in the end.

• Valid for a looong time
• Content type for web: text/plain (UTF-8)
• There are no character problems: UTF-8 ALWAYS
• Expandable
• Anyone can create data types, and the page MUST EXIST, not like xml namespaces.
• Obviously it can be saved in cache, in order to not be asking all the time, but it is something REAL.
• Easy data transfer between platforms
• Easy content migrations
• You can set definition files, so that anyone whoever wants to can create types before making them public
• Define data types with url's: only 1 namespace, and from that one everything is by default
• It has been made to be beautiful
• Easy to read and make by humans and machines
• Inferable contents: it is not necessary to write everything, which lets us shorten or make longer descriptions
• Made for being learned very quickly, with few rules
• Definition of types (grammars) included from the design stage, for full integration
• Xml refactoring
• Thanks to the type definition a super-compact format can be made, much more so than xml, json,...
• Much easier to create by hand, as we almost never have to watch the namespaces, since they are almost automatic due to their location. Namespaces like you've never seen before ;-)
• Very few data types (numbers without limitation, this is semantic, not a programming language)
• Easy to transform from this format to other formats
• Ambition: allow progress towards the semantic web, with the creation of beautiful html views and a strong STxT base.
• One of the objectives is to make the information open. This is also done during the design phase. By design, the content is open.

Applications, results, and expectations

I believe we have created a great language. Simple, practical, and truly useful.

I have written this book in this language. And I had never felt so comfortable. For me it has been a great discovery. When I use it, I think: people have to know it. The language deserves it. It cannot be kept hidden. It has to be tried. And it has to be liked. I don't want to be the only one who has it. It wouldn’t be fair.

I would like for STxT to hold a place of honor with other languages in the future, and that this was due to its acceptance and the usefulness that it offered.