It's a common itch to want to scratch. HTML and XML are very
verbose, but almost universally supported for data exchange
and publishing. I can think of quite a few more (usually terser)
languages that routinely get compiled to html: Texi, Markdown, pod
(perl's "plain old documentation"), Javadoc, etc.
Most Wikis have custom markup that eventually gets rendered into html.
Anyway, an interesting subject.
Matt
--
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to
your grandmother." -- Albert Einstein.