Introduction to Elements

This section describes each element in the Journal Publishing DTD. Although the elements are declared in many different modules, they are described here in alphabetical order of their tag names (i.e., element type names). The tag name is the shorter machine-readable name used in tagged documents, DTD fragments, and by software; for example, the tag name <p> is used for the element named Paragraph.

Each element is described by a separate HTML page, where the heading for the page displays the element’s tag name followed by its longer descriptive name. The rest of the element description page discusses aspects of the element and its usage. These sections within the page always appear in the following order although any given element description may not contain all the sections:

Definition

This section provides a narrative description of the element, that is, it “defines” the element and may provide information on its usage. This is not intended to be a formal dictionary definition, but more to provide information about an element and how it may be used.

Remarks

For some elements, this section provides additional information about the element, contrasting elements, or element usage. (Note: While theoretically, information about contrasting elements is provided here, and information on related elements is provided in the Related Elements section, in practice the two segments may overlap, with elements associated with the current element discussed in Remarks or with contrasting elements explained in Related Elements.)

Conversion Notes are explicit and sometimes very technical instructions to people who are mapping between this DTD and other DTDS or who are building conversion software to convert between another DTD and a DTD written from this DTD Suite. They may be more technical than a general reader will need to worry about.

Authoring Notes are usage instructions aimed at persons writing or editing journal articles according to an authoring DTD written from this DTD Suite.

Implementor’s Notes are instructions written to persons creating or maintaining DTDs based on the DTD Suite, for example, information explaining that the Chemical Markup Language has not been included in the base DTD Suite and were and how it could be included.

Attributes

For an element that may take attributes, this segment contains an alphabetical list of those attributes. Each line contains the identification for one attribute: first, the attribute’s name as it appears in the DTD, then a longer, more descriptive name. Full attribute definitions are not provided; instead, each attribute is linked to its description in the Attribute Section, which follows the Element Description Section in this Tag Library.

Related Elements

This segment contains information about elements associated with the current element. For example, a <def-list> has many components: an optional title, possibly headers for both the term and definition columns, and multiple wrapper elements, each containing a single term and its definition. In order to better understand the relationship of such components, information about all of them will be provided in the Related Elements segment for each element comprising a <def-list>. (Note: While theoretically, information on related elements is provided here, and information about contrasting elements is provided in the Remarks section, in practice the two segments may overlap, with elements associated with the current element discussed in Remarks or with contrasting elements explained in Related Elements.)

Model Information

Content Model

This section contains a copy of the element’s declaration from the DTD, i.e., the “content” of an element as shown in XML syntax. For those users not versed in XML syntax, a description in plain English follows.

Description

This section contains a description of the “content” of the element, that is, what is allowed to be inside the element, for example, whether it may contain text, other elements, or both text and others elements in some combination. This content description contains the same information in plain English phrasing that the DTD provides in XML syntax. For example, the description of an element may contain, “text, numbers, and special characters”, which means it contains ordinary text. If an element contains other elements, their names are listed here.

Context Table Segment

As noted earlier, the tag library contains a complete context table providing information about where any element can be used. This section contains the portion of the context table relevant to the element being discussed, that is, a listing of the elements which may contain the element under discussion.

Tagged Example

This portion of the element description page provides an excerpt of a tagged XML document, showing use of the current element. Usually an element is shown in context, with its surrounding elements, and the current element is highlighted in bold.

Module

This portion names the base DTD Suite or Publishing DTD module in which the element is defined. In those instances in which the Suite’s declaration for an element has been over-ridden by a DTD-specific over-ride module, the name of the DTD-specific over-ride module will be named instead.