html would actually be <element atribute=value></element> or something. What's in the text file comes from MMF's Ini++ object.
but MMF did not create the format, I believe microsoft did (millions of them and .inf files in the windows and system32 folders)
and in html, they are called tags, but an individual tag contains element as it's first part, eg:
this is a tag --> <element attribute=value></element>
where element is i, b, u, s, href, etc. the tag is the whole thing together