Translating between different markup languages

There has been some work towards building automatic translators for converting electronic documents from one markup language to another. The need for such systems is apparent: Even though most of today's documents get written electronically, it is still practically impossible to exchange electronic documents generated on disparate computer systems. This means that the only way information can be exchanged is by first printing a hardcopy.

There are two approaches to solving this problem:

1. Recognize high-level structure in the form of abstract syntax and then convert the abstract syntax representation to any desired concrete syntax.
2. Produce an output form that is the least common denominator of the various high-level representations and then exchange this version.

• Producing abstract syntax
• Converting to the least common denominator