bitmark and XML

bitmark does not compete with XML. Publishers and standards bodies produce in XML, and that stays; bitmark carries the same content to apps, AI and agents, and the converter brings it over with its IDs intact.

Does bitmark replace XML?

No. Editing, typesetting and archiving run on XML formats such as JATS, NISO STS, DITA or DocBook, and the tools around them work well. bitmark represents the same content once more, as bits, for everything that comes after production.

What is each one for?

	XML	bitmark
Main job	Producing, typesetting and archiving documents	Delivering knowledge to apps, retrieval systems and agents
Unit	The document, a tree of elements	The bit: a typed, addressable piece
Written by	Editorial systems	People and systems alike; the markup is readable
What each piece carries	What the schema allows	Its type, its ID, the customer's ID and its place in the source
Delivery	Whole files	JSONL, one bit per line

How do they stay in step?

The parser imports NISO STS XML and keeps the IDs, anchors and links of the original on the customer side of each bit. A new edition is matched bit by bit through those IDs; see The Rosetta Map. Writing a complete NISO STS document back from the bits is planned.

Why not cut chunks straight from the XML?

Chunks cut from an XML tree either lose their context or need custom code for every schema and every publisher. A bit is self-contained: it carries its type, its IDs and its place in the source, in the same shape whatever the source format was.

And linked data, such as JSON-LD or RDF?

Linked data is good at describing things and how they relate: a standard, its terms, its editions. bitmark carries the content itself. The two meet in the bit passport, the delivery header proposed as JSON-LD.