Marking up marginalia notes...

Hi,

My project is using DocBook 5.0 to markup the contents of
some
older (19th century) publications.

Some of these publications have paragraphs with notes
printed
next to them in the margin in much smaller type.

I'm searching for the most semantically useful DocBook
elements
to use for marking up these notes.  I'm looking at the
<note>
and the <callout> element but I also need to capture
the
fact that margin notes "belong" with the paragraph
they're
printed with.

Can anyone suggest a better approach?

Thanks,

Stu

-- 

Stuart Hungerford
ANUSF Data Intensive Projects


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Stuart Hungerford <stuart.hungerfordanu.edu.au>, 2007-09-19 14:37 +1000:

> My project is using DocBook 5.0 to markup the contents
of some
> older (19th century) publications.

That sounds like what TEI is intended for. Is there a reason
you
decided to use DocBook instead of TEI?

> Some of these publications have paragraphs with notes
printed
> next to them in the margin in much smaller type.
>
> I'm searching for the most semantically useful DocBook
elements
> to use for marking up these notes.  I'm looking at the
<note>
> and the <callout> element but I also need to
capture the
> fact that margin notes "belong" with the
paragraph they're
> printed with.
>
> Can anyone suggest a better approach?

The annotation element and annotations attribute:

  h
ttp://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/annotation.html
  http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/ref-
elements.html#db.cmn.annotations

You can associate an annotation with a particular element
either
by putting an "annotations" attribute on the
element, with its value
set to the xml:id value of the annotation; or you can do it
by
putting an "annotates" attribute on the
annotation, with its value
set to the xml:id of the element it annotates.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

http://sideshowbarker.net/

Michael(tm) Smith wrote:

> [...]
> That sounds like what TEI is intended for. Is there a
reason you
> decided to use DocBook instead of TEI?

   These documents are mostly census reports and tabulations
and
   contain large numbers of complex tables, charts, maps,
tables
   of contents in a rigid heirarchy of sections, parts,
divisions,
   publications etc.  So far there's relatively little
"free"
   text other than some opening paragraphs in each volume.

   DocBook seemed to be a better semantic match for this
kind of
   document, although I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise.

>> Some of these publications have paragraphs with
notes printed
>> next to them in the margin in much smaller type.
> [...]
> The annotation element and annotations attribute:
> 
>   h
ttp://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/annotation.html
>   http://www.docbook.org/tdg5/en/html/ref-
elements.html#db.cmn.annotations
> 
> You can associate an annotation with a particular
element either
> by putting an "annotations" attribute on the
element, with its value
> set to the xml:id value of the annotation; or you can
do it by
> putting an "annotates" attribute on the
annotation, with its value
> set to the xml:id of the element it annotates.

    That's very useful -- thanks!

Stu

-- 

Stuart Hungerford
ANUSF Data Intensive Projects


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