Version 3.0

[Updated versions of the Tag Suite have been released. Current version information is available here.]

Version 3.0 is non-backward compatible release of the NLM Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Suite (Tag Suite). The changes in version 3.0 reflect requests made by users and improvements identified by the AIT Working Group as necessary for the Tag Suite's future usability.

Rationale and Philosophy for Changes

In the almost six years since its introduction, the NLM Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Suite has grown in both scope and usage. In order to meet the needs of the journal publishing and archiving communities now and in the future, version 3.0 of the Tag Suite had to include some non-backward compatible changes.

In deciding which changes to implement and how, the Working Group strove to minimize the negative impact the changes would have on existing systems. To that end, the Working Group followed these guidelines for implementing changes:

• Any change must improve the model or functionality.
• Structures including new data must e optional, not required.
• Changes to existing models must not introduce mismatches in granularity.
• All new models should be producible from the old models.

The rationale behind the changes varies, but all were made with the intent to make it easier to go forward. Many of the changes were of the "if we had known then what we know now" variety. Others were changes that have been obvious improvements for four or five years, but could not be made within the scope of normal maintenance because they would have been backward-incompatible and made conversion necessary.

• Some changes were the regular scope changes and additions to the tag set that always create changes, for example the addition of a new funding model (<funding-group>).
• Some elements were renamed to make the naming more consistent throughout the tag set, for example the element <custom-meta-wrap> was changed to <custom-meta-group> because it was learned over the years that “wraps” were a single element in all its component parts and “groups” were collections of similar objects.
• Some confusing or hard-to-use-correctly aspects of the models were simplified, for example, the “citation-type” attribute on bibliographic reference citations used to be a text attribute that gave the “type” of the citation. This attribute was used to specify that this was a journal not a book, or that this was a print not a web publication, or that this was published by the government or by a standards body. Use of this “type” attribute got very confusing when a user wanted to specify several things about a document, for example that it was a report published online by the government. This single over-used attribute was replaced with three new, more specific attributes: @publication-type (to hold journal or book), @publication-format (to hold print versus online), and @publisher-type (to hold standards body versus government).
• Some wrapper elements were added to keep related-material together, for example translated-titles and subtitles are now tied together (rather than having all the translated titles followed by all the translated subtitles) in a <trans-title-group> element, which can hold the @xml:lang attribute which used to be on individual titles and subtitles.

The comprehensive lists of all changes are available in the Tag Libraries for each Tag Set (listed below).

Tag Sets

These Tag Sets are availble in version 3.0:

• Archiving and Interchange (Green)
• Journal Publishing (Blue)
• Article Authoring (Pumpkin)
• NCBI Book (Purple)

Tag Library Changes

The version 3.0 tag libraries allow direct access by tag name to the element, attribute, and parameter entity pages. To link to one of these pages, construct a URL with the following content, concatenated without spaces or separators:

• the full URL of the top (https://.../index.html) page of the Tag Library
• a "?"
• a code indicating what sort of page you are seeking:
  • "elem" for element pages
  • "attr" for attribute pages
  • "pe" for parameter entity pages
• "="
• the tag, attribute-tag, or parameter-entity-tag (that is, the version of the names that are used in the document or in other content models, not the multi-word version).

For example, to directly address the <award-group> element in the Publishing Tag Library, assemble:

• https://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/tag-library/3.0/index.html
• ?
• elem
• =
• award-group

That would make the complete link: https://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/tag-library/3.0/index.html?elem=award-group.

Similarly, to link to the article-type attribute in archiving:

• https://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/archiving/tag-library/3.0/index.html
• ?
• attr
• =
• article-type

The complete link would be: https://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/archiving/tag-library/3.0/index.html?attr=article-type

To link to the emphasis.class parameter entity in the authoring Tag Library:

• https://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/articleauthoring/tag-library/3.0/index.html
• ?
• pe
• =
• emphasis.class

The complete link would be: https://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/articleauthoring/tag-library/3.0/index.html?pe=emphasis.class.