...
<para>Information processing, especially text markup, was primitive in the colony.
For example, most text stores were in XML! Documents may have looked like this:
<programlisting>
   &lt;teiHeader&gt;
      &lt;fileDesc&gt;
         &lt;titleStmt&gt;
            &lt;title&gt;Farming in the New World&lt;/title&gt;
      ...
        &lt;/titleStmt&gt;
      &lt;/fileDesc&gt;
  &lt;/teiHeader&gt;
</programlisting>
Notice the paired Tags: <code>&lt;title&gt;</code> and <code>&lt;/title&gt;</code>
and the primitive use of indenting. Unusual features of the colonists data
processing practices included:
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>Tags</term>
<listitem><para>Meaningful descriptions of the information enclosed by the
markers</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Balance</term>
<listitem><para>All markup is both opened and closed (or explicitely
empty)</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
...