It becomes a "markup" language (ala markdown, etc) when the "markups" are removed and replaced by htlm codes. As you noted, in HN, when using stars they get removed and replace by some <i>...</i> stuff.
No. Asterisks that aren't lexical content are markup. HTML tags are also markup, just a different markup. When you replace asterisks with HTML tags, you're translating from one markup to another.
The markup cycle ends when the markup is rendered as styled text that a human recognizes as lexical content. For example, italicized text.
The thing is I don't "replace" asteriks with HTLM tags, I keep the asterisks visible.
If star text star displays star text star in bold (ie, not removing the stars, inserting </b> stuff around the whole construct), is it still a "markup language" ?
Let say I process a text file to display it in HTML and the only addition I do is say "quoted content gets italicized". Is that a "markup language", or just some "text embellishment"?
The issue I am trying to address is the learning curve with all the existing markup languages. Without going the "wysiwyg" editing way, that is.
I figured out that if the "marks" are visible in the final result, they get easy to learn.