• @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    A PowerPoint, word document or even a text file or picture. There is only a description in the file of what it holds and it’s up to the program that reads it, how it will visualize or interpret it.

    A word document or PDF would be the closest.

    • @pivot_root
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      28 months ago

      To be fair to PDFs, they can contain JavaScript. Blame Adobe for that and their originally-exclusive-to-Acrobat extension for that.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        A word document can also contain a script, as can html pages. It’s why I thought these two were the closest match. Nobody is going to call those programming languages.

    • Bob
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      18 months ago

      You mean the code behind the scenes is like HTML? But then I don’t see how it’s not in a programming language.

      • @[email protected]
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        18 months ago

        No, the html file itself. It just contains elements like a paragraph, image, list, table,… just like a word document.

        • Bob
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          18 months ago

          So you mean for example that typing <p>…</p> is more comporable pressing enter in Microsoft Word? But then you’re typing a code instead, no?

          • @[email protected]
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            28 months ago

            Yes, typing <p> in HTML is like pressing enter in word, but that doesn’t make it a programming language, it makes it a markup language.

            A markup language is also what you can use to format comments here: You use a specific syntax to indicate how you want things formatted.

            The separation from a programming language is that a programming language can be used to implement logic, like saying: In the following paragraph, a word should be bold if it contains the letter “A”. That cannot be done with a markup language.

            • Bob
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              18 months ago

              Okay, I follow now. Thanks for your patience, ha.