We present a powerful grammar-based paradigm for electronic document markup: coordinated definite clause translation grammars. This markup is of a declarative character, being, in effect, a collection of constraints on the logical and physical structure of documents. To the best of our knowledge, coordinated grammars and their parsers can accommodate all of the descriptive and layout processing functionality enjoyed by extant electronic markup languages. We describe an operational prototype that demonstrates the feasibility of a syntax-directed basis for formalizing and realizing document layout
