Show HN: Mark 1.0, a notation that unifies JSON, HTML, JSX, XML, YAML, and more

7 henryluo 10 7/18/2025, 1:32:47 PM marknotation.org ↗

Author of Mark Notation here.

Mark is a unified notation for both object and markup data, combining the best of JSON, HTML, and XML with a clean syntax and succinct data model.

I'm glad to announce the 1.0 Release of Mark. This release is just the start of a long journey to make web a better platform to store and exchange data.

Your feedback welcome!

Comments (10)

gao_xing · 6h ago

Dear author,

kudos! It's impressive to see so many rich scalar types supported under Mark, including: symbol, decimal number, datetime, binary, and even Element as a new container type. Excited to try this notation out!

Thank you.

henryluo · 6h ago

Glad you like it. I have bigger plan for what's currently released. My next goal is to unify the schema of all those data formats, like JSON, XML, HTML, etc. And make the new Mark Schema able to validate all those data formats.

gao_xing · 6h ago

Wow, looking forward to the full-fledged version with unified support of features from JSON, XML, and HTML!

FerkiHN · 6h ago

The idea is cool, but in my opinion, the downside of many types of notation is the markup symbols, which are essentially useless, like they complicate the syntax with symbols, although everything worked without them anyway, I wanted them to solve this.

henryluo · 6h ago

Glad to see your comment. Not sure I get you right. I also do not like many data notations and formats floating around. I hope there's one notation that can unify all the data that I'm concerned with. That's why I created Mark.

FerkiHN · 4h ago

Sorry for writing in a strange way, in short, your Mark is wonderful, but I don't like the symbols in the markup like "<" before each command, because without them, in fact, you can also make a working markup, maybe they use it for beauty?

GOTO95 · 6h ago

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/927/

henryluo · 6h ago

A new notation by itself won't be useful. It's the tool stack, the eco system around it that matters. That's why I'm building beyond that the format itself. I'm building the schema, the validator, the scripting and query language around it.

henryluo · 6h ago

Yes, it's a must! Have that posted in the 0.11 beta release as well. :-)

henryluo · 6h ago

Here's the XKCD 927 post from last beta release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16308803