Markup Versus Content

When you're looking at the XML document in Listing 2.2 for the first time, it is easy to become overwhelmed by its apparent complexity. But fundamentally, every XML document is a combination of some content with its associated markup.

Content is the unique information that needs to be conveyed by the document. The names of the menu items, their prices, and the name of the restaurant are all examples of document content.

The markup is the set of tags and other XML syntax features that give structure to the content. In general, anything appearing between <> characters in an XML document is considered to be markup.