RE: DOCBOOK: metadata

[Peter Ring <pri@magnus.dk>]

Murray Altheim and Sean Palmer is working on extending XHTML with metadata,
e.g. in the form of Dublin Core metadata. See
http://www.doctypes.org/meta/NOTE-xhtml-augmeta.html. 

The idea is to allow metadata everywhere by allowing the <meta> element
everywhere inline content is allowed, extending <meta> with a href attribute
so that it does not have to be a child element of what it is describing, and
to extend the content model of <meta> with DC elements.

Now, there are a lot of issues here that are rather specific for XHTML: you
have to take existing applications (browsers) into account, it is primarily
an exchange format, etc. etc.

But I think we can learn a lot from the XHTML discussion anyway. E.g., we
should rather have metadata elements point to the elements that they are
describing than the other way around. 

I suggest that a new metadata element should 'interface' to other DocBook
elements in a way similar to <indexterm>, see
http://www.docbook.org/tdg/html/indexterm.html. Historically, DocBook grew
out of the need to merge indexes, and the initiative that gave birth to
DocBook also fostered topic maps, which is a comprehensive way to deal with
metadata. It would be a nice twist...

If we were to settle on a very specific content model for metadata, I
suggest that we look a bit further that DC and PRISM, which -- at least
until now -- have primarily been exchange formats for metadata for complete
documents (and PRISM also has a rather specific focus, the news industry).

If DC were to become a basic model for storage of metadata, it would have to
be extended in various ways; DC is designed to be extended, and it happens
all the time. So we would in any case need a way to specify exactly what
scheme was used to encode metadata.


Kind regards,
Peter Ring


-----Original Message-----
From: M. Wroth [mailto:mark@astrid.upland.ca.us]
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2001 5:15 AM
To: Michael Sabrio; docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: DOCBOOK: metadata



At 02:44 PM 6/29/01 -0400, Michael Sabrio wrote:

The DocBook Tech Committee would like your input on a couple of
issues related to metadata.


It appears to me that metadata could reasonably be associated with any
element of DocBook, and I'd prefer to see an optional metadata element
associated with very nearly any element at the paragraph / figure level or
above.

I suppose an attribute that points to a separate metadata element rather
than an inclusion would be a reasonable solution -- but I lean toward an
actual content element, preferably common across all elements (from my
perspective, having bookinfo be different than articleinfo is not useful).

I have a minor need for metadata at the programlisting level (currently
satisfied by going up a level or two, combined with comments at the specific
programlisting), so this is more than a purely theoretical issue for me,
although not one that has reached the "I must do something about this"
level.

I'm not familiar enough with "standard" metadata to offer an opinion on
whether there is one that meets our collective needs.  If there is one, I'd
probably generically be in favor of adopting it, rather than rolling our
own.


Mark B. Wroth
<mark@astrid.upland.ca.us>