[Refdb-users] xnotes

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Bruce D'Arcus writes:
 > 
 > Been looking at the xnotes dtd.  A couple of observations/questions:
 > 
 > On the link element:
 > 
 > 1)  Why is there a keyword element and a keyword attribute value on 
 > link?  Isn't this redundant?
 > 

The keyword element is used to enter keywords that help you locate
notes by keyword, just like you locate references by keyword. The
keyword attribute in the link element allows you to attach a note to a
keyword if you'd ever want to do that. You might use it e.g. to
explain ugly acronyms used as keywords.

 > 2)  Why the journal links?  I'd assume author and reference would cover 
 > the need (and maybe keyword).
 > 

Again, this allows you to attach a note to a periodical. Enter the
names of the editorial board members to see whether it is biased or
whatever you can think of. Supporting additional links in xnotes.dtd
comes at an extremely low cost, so I'd rather put these links in than
wait for the obvious question that will eventually arise.

 > 3)  I remain uncomfortable with "author."  Maybe following MODS -- with 
 > "name" -- would be better?
 > 

I'm not religious about element names. Let's try and hear a few other
opinions.

 > Other issues:
 > 
 > I think it'd be better to put the date into an attribute on the main 
 > xnote element.  Example: <xnote date="20031125">
 > 

I don't like that as it requires additional non-xml parsing in any
stylesheet working on these data. Not that this is difficult per se,
but people will change the order of Y-M-D or forget the zeros in
one-digit dates or use two-digit years if they are given a chance
to. Every stylesheet will have to deal with the odd cases and user
ignorance. Using a date element with subelements solves all these
issues.

 > I've managed to get my own notes schema to work with MODS.  What I'm 
 > now looking at is merging it with xnote.  Feedback would help.
 > 

Why don't you go ahead and post your current schema (also converted to
DTD for the boneheads)? There's room for improvements in the current
implementation of notex.dtd, and I'd like to learn from your
experience.

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de