[theodpHN]

List history (listory?) lesson, kids: As the link below to a 1985 IBM mainframe DCF/GML manual shows, DL-DT-DD have been a thing since before the web. In addition to Definition lists (DL), the 40+ year-old documentation describes Glossary lists (GL), Ordered lists (OL), Unordered lists (UL), and Simple lists (SL).

ibm :: 370 :: DCF :: SH35-0050-2 Document Composition Facility Generalized Markup Language Implementation Guide Rel 3 Mar85

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm370DCFSpositionFaci...

[skgough]

I believe IBM Generalized Markup Language evolved into SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) which was used heavily at CERN when Tim Berners-Lee was working on HTML, which is heavily derived from it. I find this interesting about HTML: some form of the markup language had been floating around for decades until Berners-Lee added hyperlinks to it.

[epc]

GML dates to 1969, SGML from the 1970s. Internally we used something called BookMaster which kind of? looks like a precursor to HTML (you had :p. instead of <p>, :li. instead of <li>). There was an effort circa 1990-1991 (as TBL was developing HTML and HTTP) called HyTime which was an SGML application focused on hypermedia. HTML killed that fairly quickly.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goldfarb who shepherded GML/SGML and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_La...

[JohnKemeny]

Isn't it description list?

[hoppyhoppy2]

FWIW, the Wikipedia page on "HTML elements" says:

>A description list (a.k.a. association list or definition list)[...]

The "Definition list" Wikipedia article is a redirect to that paragraph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_element#dl