TXTML

TXTML

The markup language for Subversive (Mobile) Storytelling.

Together with its interpreter and messaging engine, TXTML (TeXT-message Markup Language) comprises a system for creating interactive text-messaging applications.

TXTML encourages natural and open-ended exchanges that emphasize context over commands, allowing the author to dynamically tailor applications to the current location, time, and history of the user. The language is an elegant, domain-specific XML-variant which calls on an extensible library of functional modules. These include methods for natural language processing, user administration, content management, dynamically generated content via Atom/RSS feeds, and location tracking. The language's nonlinear structure enables complex applications to be simply composed, whether narrative artworks, games, surveys, or interpretive content.

TXTML was not designed to create standard text-message applications such as mailing lists or lookup services. Rather, it is a experimental platform for investigating text-messaging as a narrative medium. It's inspired by INFORM, AIML, and VXML, but with the particular interactive concerns of text-messaging in mind. An outgrowth of Brian House’s design thesis, it powers artwork by Knifeandfork, including a forthcoming piece called The Wrench. Knifeandfork coined the term Subversive (Mobile) Storytelling to describe their recent work -- the use of mobile phones to transform our experience of narrative by intertwining it with daily life.