The Z format is an open, and freely available document and typesetting

Typesetting

Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...

 language, coded by David H. Kristensen and Dan Ponte from the Z Initiative.

Z is loosely based on XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 and SGML standards, and inspired by TeX

TeX

TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

, but with a focus on preserving the ease of use without compromising functionality.

Z supports CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...

 through the implementation of formatting areas, although z2html is currently the only one of the tools to recognize that support.

Example syntax

Document Header

Example Document Text in bold and italic
Red text

Z utilities

• z2html, which translates Z to XHTML 1.1
• z2rtf, which translates Z to RTF
• MoZaiC, a console Z browser.

See also

• List of document markup languages
• Comparison of document markup languages
  Comparison of document markup languages
  The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of document markup languages. Please see the individual markup languages' articles for further information.-General information:...
  
  
• SGML
• XML
  XML
  Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....