HTMLK — Markup for Martin
Published by Mark Marino January 15th, 2007 in code, poetry, Poetics, Features, Conferences.
At MLA 2007 in Philadelphia, John Cayley introduced the idea of an “ideal syntax,” the parole that adheres to the langue or the code that will compile. It is this “ideal syntax” that many codeworks are writing against, disrupting, challenging, and distorting. Therefore, by not compiling, codeworks may be fighting the protocols. In that spirit, I present a draft of a markup poem I’ve been working on in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
So as not to break our feed with this resistant code, I will post a link here to the current version. WRT: Are their other code-based tributes to MLK, a man who has been added to the Federal Google Calendar but cannot be so easily compiled or processed?
[view academic citations]
Lovely Mark! Very clever. :)
This is made obsolete by Malcolm X’s markup language: XHTML.
It was pointed out to me on ifMUD that this language may have been obsoleted by the markup language for Malcolm X … XHTML.
Perhaps we could all just get along with an XMLK-compliant common language!
You know, Mark, I think this would be good to expand into a short series. The play with regulating code has real possibilities for César Chávez Day etc.
I’m not entirely certain about the decision to isolate the dangerously standards-recalcitrant markup in a PDF. The first thing I did after reading it through was paste it into a file so I could run it in a web browser. Not that I object to exposing the source being the primary mode, of course - but couldn’t there also be a link to an HTML version? A PDF guarantees the intended PDF, but feels a little bit like a designated free speech zone, if you see what I’m saying.