Digital Repository Interface (DRI) is a schema that governs the structure of a Manakin DSpace page when encoded as an XML Document. It determines what elements can be present in the Document and the relationship of those elements to each other. This reference document explains the purpose of DRI, provides a broad architectural overview, and explains common design patterns. The appendix includes a complete reference for elements used in the DRI Schema, a graphical representation of the element hierarchy, and a quick reference table of elements and attributes.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

This manual describes the Digital Repository Interface (DRI) as it applies to the DSpace digital repository and XMLUI Manakin based interface. DSpace XML UI is a comprehensive user interface system. It is centralized and generic, allowing it to be applied to all DSpace pages, effectively replacing the JSP-based interface system. Its ability to apply specific styles to arbitrarily large sets of DSpace pages significantly eases the task of adapting the DSpace look and feel to that of the adopting institution. This also allows for several levels of branding, lending institutional credibility to the repository and collections.

Manakin, the second version of DSpace XML UI, consists of several components, written using Java, XML, and XSL, and is implemented in Cocoon. Central to the interface is the XML Document, which is a semantic representation of a DSpace page. In Manakin, the XML Document adheres to a schema called the Digital Repository Interface (DRI) Schema, which was developed in conjunction with Manakin and is the subject of this guide. For the remainder of this guide, the terms XML Document, DRI Document, and Document will be used interchangeably.

This reference document explains the purpose of DRI, provides a broad architectural overview, and explains common design patterns. The appendix includes a complete reference for elements used in the DRI Schema, a graphical representation of the element hierarchy, and a quick reference table of elements and attributes.

The Purpose of DRI

DRI is a schema that governs the structure of the XML Document. It determines the elements that can be present in the Document and the relationship of those elements to each other. Since all Manakin components produce XML Documents that adhere to the DRI schema, The XML Document serves as the abstraction layer. Two such components, Themes and Aspects, are essential to the workings of Manakin and are described briefly in this manual.

The Development of DRI

The DRI schema was developed for use in Manakin. The choice to develop our own schema rather than adapt an existing one came after a careful analysis of the schema's purpose as well as the lessons learned from earlier attempts at customizing the DSpace interface. Since every DSpace page in Manakin exists as an XML Document at some point in the process, the schema describing that Document had to be able to structurally represent all content, metadata and relationships between different parts of a DSpace page. It had to be precise enough to avoid losing any structural information, and yet generic enough to allow Themes a certain degree of freedom in expressing that information in a readable format.

Popular schemas such as XHTML suffer from the problem of not relating elements together explicitly. For example, if a heading precedes a paragraph, the heading is related to the paragraph not because it is encoded as such but because it happens to precede it. When these structures are attempted to be translated into formats where these types of relationships are explicit, the translation becomes tedious, and potentially problematic. More structured schemas, like TEI or DocBook, are domain specific (much like DRI itself) and therefore not suitable for our purposes.

We also decided that the schema should natively support a metadata standard for encoding artifacts. Rather than encoding artifact metadata in structural elements, like tables or lists, the schema would include artifacts as objects encoded in a particular standard. The inclusion of metadata in native format would enable the Theme to choose the best method to render the artifact for display without being tied to a particular structure.

Ultimately, we chose to develop our own schema. We have constructed the DRI schema by incorporating other standards when appropriate, such as Cocoon's i18n schema for internationalization, DCMI's Dublin Core, and the Library of Congress's METS schema. The design of structural elements was derived primarily from TEI, with some of the design patterns borrowed from other existing standards such as DocBook and XHTML. While the structural elements were designed to be easily translated into XHTML, they preserve the semantic relationships for use in more expressive languages.

DRI in Manakin

The general process for handling a request in DSpace XML UI consists of two parts. The first part builds the XML Document, and the second part stylizes that Document for output. In Manakin, the two parts are not discrete and instead wrapped within two processes: Content Generation, which builds an XML representation of the page, and Style Application, which stylizes the resulting Document. Content Generation is performed by Aspect chaining, while Style Application is performed by a Theme.

Themes

A Theme is a collection of XSL stylesheets and supporting files like images, CSS styles, translations, and help documents. The XSL stylesheets are applied to the DRI Document to covert it into a readable format and give it structure and basic visual formatting in that format. The supporting files are used to provide the page with a specific look and feel, insert images and other media, translate the content, and perform other tasks. The currently used output format is XHTML and the supporting files are generally limited to CSS, images, and JavaScript. More output formats, like PDF or SVG, may be added in the future.

A DSpace installation running Manakin may have several Themes associated with it. When applied to a page, a Theme determines most of the page's look and feel. Different themes can be applied to different sets of DSpace pages allowing for both variety of styles between sets of pages and consistency within those sets. The xmlui.xconf configuration file determines which Themes are applied to which DSpace pages (see the XMLUI Configuration and Customization section for more information on installing and configuring themes). Themes may be configured to apply to all pages of specific type, like browse-by-title, to all pages of a one particular community or collection or sets of communities and collections, and to any mix of the two. They can also be configured to apply to a singe arbitrary page or handle.

Aspect Chains

Manakin Aspects are arrangements of Cocoon components (transformers, actions, matchers, etc) that implement a new set of coupled features for the system. These Aspects are chained together to form all the features of Manakin. Five Aspects exist in the default installation of Manakin, each handling a particular set of features of DSpace, and more can be added to implement extra features. All Aspects take a DRI Document as input and generate one as output. This allows Aspects to be linked together to form an Aspect chain. Each Aspect in the chain takes a DRI Document as input, adds its own functionality, and passes the modified Document to the next Aspect in the chain.

Common Design Patterns

There are several design patterns used consistently within the DRI schema. This section identifies the need for and describes the implementation of these patterns. Three patterns are discussed: language and internationalization issues, standard attribute triplet (id, n, and rend), and the use of structure-oriented markup.

Localization and Internationalization

Internationalization is a very important component of the DRI system. It allows content to be offered in other languages based on user's locale and conditioned upon availability of translations, as well as present dates and currency in a localized manner. There are two types of translated content: content stored and displayed by DSpace itself, and content introduced by the DRI styling process in the XSL transformations. Both types are handled by Cocoon's i18n transformer without regard to their origin.

When the Content Generation process produces a DRI Document, some of the textual content may be marked up with i18n elements to signify that translations are available for that content. During the Style Application process, the Theme can also introduce new textual content, marking it up with i18n tags. As a result, after the Theme's XSL templates are applied to the DRI Document, the final output consists of a DSpace page marked up in the chosen display format (like XHTML) with i18n elements from both DSpace and XSL content. This final document is sent through Cocoon's i18n transformer that translates the marked up text.

Standard attribute triplet

Many elements in the DRI system (all top-level containers, character classes, and many others) contain one or several of the three standard attributes: id, n, and rend. The id and n attributes can be required or optional based on the element's purpose, while the rend attribute is always optional. The first two are used for identification purposes, while the third is used as a display hint issued to the styling step.

Identification is important because it allows elements to be separated from their peers for sorting, special case rendering, and other tasks. The first attribute, id, is the global identifier and it is unique to the entire document. Any element that contains an id attribute can thus be uniquely referenced by it. The id attribute of an element can be either assigned explicitly, or generated from the Java Class Path of the originating object if no name is given. While all elements that can be uniquely identified can carry the id attribute, only those that are independent on their context are required to do so. For example, tables are required to have an id since they retain meaning regardless of their location in the document, while table rows and cells can omit the attribute since their meaning depends on the parent element.

The name attribute n is simply the name assigned to the element, and it is used to distinguish an element from its immediate peers. In the example of a particular list, all items in that list will have different names to distinguish them from each other. Other lists in the document, however, can also contain items whose names will be different from each other, but identical to those in the first list. The n attribute of an element is therefore unique only in the scope of that element's parent and is used mostly for sorting purposes and special rendering of a certain class of elements, like, for example, all first items in lists, or all items named "browse". The n attribute follows the same rules as id when determining whether or not it is required for a given element.

The last attribute in the standard triplet is rend. Unlike id and n, the rend attribute can consist of several space delimited values and is optional for all elements that can contain it. Its purpose is to provide a rendering hint from the middle layer component to the styling theme. How that hint is interpreted and whether it is used at all when provided, is completely up the theme. There are several cases, however, where the content of the rend attribute is outlined in detail and its use is encouraged. Those cases are the emphasis element hi, the division element div, and the list element. Please refer to the Element Reference for more detail on these elements.

Structure-oriented markup

The final design pattern is the use of structure-oriented markup for content carried by the XML Document. Once generated by Cocoon, the Document contains two major types of information: metadata about the repository and its contents, and the actual content of the page to be displayed. A complete overview of metadata and content markup and their relationship to each other is given in the next section. An important thing to note here, however, is that the markup of the content is oriented towards explicitly stating structural relationships between the elements rather than focusing on the presentational aspects. This makes the markup used by the Document more similar to TEI or Docbook rather than HTML. For this reason, XSL templates are used by the themes to convert structural DRI markup to XHTML. Even then, an attempt is made to create XHTML as structural as possible, leaving presentation entirely to CSS. This allows the XML Document to be generic enough to represent any DSpace page without dictating how it should be rendered.

Schema Overview

The DRI XML Document consists of the root element document and three top-level elements that contain two major types of elements. The three top-level containers are meta, body, and options. The two types of elements they contain are metadata and content, carrying metadata about the page and the contents of the page, respectively. Figure 1 depicts the relationship between these six components.

Figure 1: The two content types across three major divisions of a DRI page.

The document element is the root for all DRI pages and contains all other elements. It bears only one attribute, version, that contains the version number of the DRI system and the schema used to validate the produced document. At the time of writing the working version number is "1.1".

The meta element is a the top-level element under document and contains all metadata information about the page, the user that requested it, and the repository it is used with. It contains no structural elements, instead being the only container of metadata elements in a DRI Document. The metadata stored by the meta element is broken up into three major groups: userMeta, pageMeta, and objectMeta, each storing metadata information about their respective component. Please refer to the reference entries for more information about these elements.

The options element is another top-level element that contains all navigation and action options available to the user. The options are stored as items in list elements, broken up by the type of action they perform. The five types of actions are: browsing, search, language selection, actions that are always available, and actions that are context dependent. The two action types also contain sub-lists that contain actions available to users of varying degrees of access to the system. The options element contains no metadata elements and can only make use of a small set of structural elements, namely the list element and its children.

The last major top-level element is the body element. It contains all structural elements in a DRI Document, including the lists used by the options element. Structural elements are used to build a generic representation of a DSpace page. Any DSpace page can be represented with a combination of the structural elements, which will in turn be transformed by the XSL templates into another format. This is the core mechanism that allows DSpace XML UI to apply uniform templates and styling rules to all DSpace pages and is the fundamental difference from the JSP approach currently used by DSpace.

The body element directly contains only one type of element: div. The div element serves as a major division of content and any number of them can be contained by the body. Additionally, divisions are recursive, allowing divs to contain other divs. It is within these elements that all other structural elements are contained. Those elements include tables, paragraph elements p, and lists, as well as their various children elements. At the lower levels of this hierarchy lie the character container elements. These elements, namely paragraphs p, table cells, lists items, and the emphasis element hi, contain the textual content of a DSpace page, optionally modified with links, figures, and emphasis. If the division within which the character class is contained is tagged as interactive (via the interactive attribute), those elements can also contain interactive form fields. Divisions tagged as interactive must also provide method and action attributes for its fields to use.

Figure 2: All the elements in the DRI schema (version 1.1).

Merging of DRI Documents

Having described the structure of the DRI Document, as well as its function in Manakin's Aspect chains, we now turn our attention to the one last detail of their use: merging two Documents into one. There are several situations where the need to merge two documents arises. In Manakin, for example, every Aspect is responsible for adding different functionality to a DSpace page. Since every instance of a page has to be a complete DRI Document, each Aspect is faced with the task of merging the Document it generated with the ones generated (and merged into one Document) by previously executed Aspects. For this reason rules exist that describe which elements can be merged together and what happens to their data and child elements in the process.

When merging two DRI Documents, one is considered to be the main document, and the other a feeder document that is added in. The three top level containers (meta, body and options) of both documents are then individually analyzed and merged. In the case of the options and meta elements, the children tags are taken individually as well and treated differently from their siblings.

The body elements are the easiest to merge: their respective div children are preserved along with their ordering and are grouped together under one element. Thus, the new body tag will contain all the divs of the main document followed by all the divs of the feeder. However, if two divs have the same n and rend attributes (and in case of an interactive div the same action and method attributes as well), those divs will be merged into one. The resulting div will bear the id, n, and rend attributes of the main document's div and contain all the divs of the main document followed by all the divs of the feeder. This process continues recursively until all the divs have been merged. It should be noted that two divisions with separate pagination rules cannot be merged together.

Merging the options elements is somewhat different. First, list elements under options of both documents are compared with each other. Those unique to either document are simply added under the new options element, just like divs under body. In case of duplicates, that is list elements that belong to both documents and have the same n attribute, the two lists will be merged into one. The new list element will consist of the main document's head element, followed label-item pairs from the main document, and then finally the label-item pairs of the feeder, provided they are different from those of the main.

Finally, the meta elements are merged much like the elements under body. The three children of meta - userMeta, pageMeta, and objectMeta - are individually merged, adding the contents of the feeder after the contents of the main.

Version Changes

The DRI schema will continue to evolve overtime as the needs of interface design require. The version attribute on the document will indicate which version of the schema the document conforms to. At the time Manakin was incorporated into the standard distribution of DSpac the current version was "1.1", however earlier versions of the Manakin interface may use "1.0".

Changes from 1.0 to 1.1

There were major structural changes between these two version numbers. Several elements were removed from the schema:includeSet, include, objectMeta, and object. Originally all metadata for objects were included in-line with the DRI document, this proved to have several problems and has been removed in version 1.1 of the DRI schema. Instead of including metadata in-line, external references to the metadata is included. Thus, a reference element has been added along with referenceSet. These new elements operate like their counterparts in the previous version except refrencing metadata contained on the objectMeta element they reference metadata in external files. The repository and repositoryMeta elements were alse modified in a similar manner removing in-line metadata and refrencing external metadata documents.

Element Reference

Element

Attributes

Required?

BODY

 

 

cell

 

 

 

cols

 

 

id

 

 

n

 

 

rend

 

 

role

 

 

rows

 

div

 

 

 

action

required for interactive behavior

 

behaviorSensitivFields

 

 

currentPage

 

 

firstItemIndex

 

 

id

required

 

interactive

 

 

itemsTotal

 

 

lastItemIndex

 

 

method

required for interactive

 

n

required

 

nextPage

 

 

pagesTotal

 

 

pageURLMask

 

 

pagination

 

 

previousPage

 

 

rend

 

DOCUMENT

version

required

field

 

 

 

disabled

 

 

id

required

 

n

required

 

rend

 

 

required

 

 

type

required

figure

 

 

 

rend

 

 

source

 

 

target

 

head

 

 

 

id

 

 

n

 

 

rend

 

help

 

 

hi

rend

required

instance

 

 

item

 

 

 

id

 

 

n

 

 

rend

 

label

 

 

 

id

 

 

n

 

 

rend

 

list

 

 

 

id

required

 

n

required

 

rend

 

 

type

 

META

 

 

metadata

 

 

 

element

required

 

language

 

 

qualifier

 

OPTIONS

 

 

p

 

 

 

id

 

 

n

 

 

rend

 

pageMeta

 

 

params

 

 

 

cols

 

 

maxlength

 

 

multiple

 

 

operations

 

 

rows

 

 

size

 

reference

 

 

 

url

required

 

repositoryID

required

 

type

 

referenceSet

 

 

id

required

 

n

required

 

orderBy

 

 

rend

 

 

type

required

repository

 

 

 

repositoryID

required

 

url

required

repositoryMeta

 

 

row

 

 

 

id

 

 

n

 

 

rend

 

 

role

required

table

 

 

 

cols

required

 

id

required

 

n

required

 

rend

 

 

rows

required

trail

 

 

 

rend

 

 

target

 

userMeta

authenticated

required

value

 

 

 

optionSelected

 

 

optionValue

 

 

type

required

xref

target

required

BODY

Top-Level Container

The body element is the main container for all content displayed to the user. It contains any number of div elements that group content into interactive and display blocks.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<document version=1.0>
  <meta> ... </meta>
   <body>
    <div n="division-example1"
	id="XMLExample.div.division-example1">
     ...
    </div>
    <div n="division-example2" id="XMLExample.div.division-example2"
	interactive="yes" action="www.DRItest.com"
	method="post">
     ...
    </div>
     ...
   </body>
  <options> ... </options>
</document>

cell

Rich Text Container

Structural Element

The cell element contained in a row of a table carries content for that table. It is a character container, just like p, item, and hi, and its primary purpose is to display textual data, possibly enhanced with hyperlinks, emphasized blocks of text, images and form fields. Every cell can be annotated with a role (the most common being "header" and "data") and can stretch across any number of rows and columns. Since cells cannot exist outside their container, row, their id attribute is optional.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<table n="table-example" id="XMLExample.table.table-example" rows="2"
	cols="3">
    <row role="head">
       <cell cols="2">Data Label One and Two</cell> <cell>Data Label
	Three</cell>
      ...
    </row>
    <row>
       <cell> Value One </cell> <cell> Value Two </cell> <cell> Value
	Three </cell>
      ...
    </row>
    ...
</table>

div

Structural Element

The div element represents a major section of content and can contain a wide variety of structural elements to present that content to the user. It can contain paragraphs, tables, and lists, as well as references to artifact information stored in artifactMeta, repositoryMeta, collections, and communities. The div element is also recursive, allowing it to be further divided into other divs. Divs can be of two types: interactive and static. The two types are set by the use of the interactive attribute and differ in their ability to contain interactive content. Children elements of divs tagged as interactive can contain form fields, with the action and method attributes of the div serving to resolve those fields.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<body>
     <div n="division-example"
	id="XMLExample.div.division-example">
      <head> Example Division </head>
      <p> This example shows the use of divisions. </p>
      <table ...>
        ...
      </table>
      <referenceSet ...>
        ...
      </referenceSet>
      <list ...>
        ...
      </list>
       <div n="sub-division-example"
	id="XMLExample.div.sub-division-example">
        <p> Divisions may be nested </p>
        ...
       </div>
      ...
     </div>
    ...
</body>

DOCUMENT

Document Root

The document element is the root container of an XML UI document. All other elements are contained within it either directly or indirectly. The only attribute it carries is the version of the Schema to which it conforms.

Parent

Children

Attributes

 <document
	version="1.1">
    <meta>
      ...
    </meta>
    <body>
      ...
    </body>
    <options>
      ...
    </options>
 </document>

field

Text Container

Structural Element

The field element is a container for all information necessary to create a form field. The required type attribute determines the type of the field, while the children tags carry the information on how to build it. Fields can only occur in divisions tagged as "interactive".

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>
  <hi> ... </hi>
  <xref> ... </xref>
  <figure> ... </figure>
  ...
   <field id="XMLExample.field.name" n="name" type="text"
	required="yes">
    <params size="16" maxlength="32"/>
    <help>Some help text with <i18n>localized
	content</i18n>.</help>
    <value type="raw">Default value goes
	here</value>
   </field>
</p>

figure

Text Container

Structural Element

The figure element is used to embed a reference to an image or a graphic element. It can be mixed freely with text, and any text within the tag itself will be used as an alternative descriptor or a caption.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>
    <hi> ... </hi>
    ...
    <xref> ... </xref>
    ...
    <field> ... </field>
    ...
     <figure source="www.example.com/fig1"> This is a static image.
	</figure> <figure source="www.example.com/fig1"
	target="www.example.net">
      This image is also a link.
     </figure>
    ...
</p>

head

Text Container

Structural Element

The head element is primarily used as a label associated with its parent element. The rendering is determined by its parent tag, but can be overridden by the rend attribute. Since there can only be one head element associated with a particular tag, the n attribute is not needed, and the id attribute is optional.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<div ...>
     <head> This is a simple header associated with its div element.
	</head>
    <div ...>
       <head rend="green"> This header will be green.
	</head>
      <p>
         <head> A header with <i18n>localized content</i18n>.
	</head>
        ...
      </p>
    </div>
    <table ...>
       <head> ...
	</head>
      ...
    </table>
    <list ...>
       <head> ...
	</head>
      ...
    </list>
    ...
</body>

help

Text Container

Structural Element

The optional help element is used to supply help instructions in plain text and is normally contained by the field element. The method used to render the help text in the target markup is up to the theme.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>
    <hi> ... </hi>
    ...
    <xref> ... </xref>
    ...
    <figure> ... </figure>
    ...
    <field id="XMLExample.field.name" n="name" type="text"
	required="yes">
      <params size="16" maxlength="32" />
       <help>Some help text with <i18n>localized
	content</i18n>.</help>
    </field>
    ...
</p>

hi

Rich Text Container

Structural Element

The hi element is used for emphasis of text and occurs inside character containers like p and list item. It can be mixed freely with text, and any text within the tag itself will be emphasized in a manner specified by the required rend attribute. Additionally, hi element is the only text container component that is a rich text container itself, meaning it can contain other tags in addition to plain text. This allows it to contain other text containers, including other hi tags.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>
    This text is normal, while  <hi rend="bold">this text is bold and
	this text is <hi rend="italic">bold and
	italic.</hi></hi>
</p>

instance

Structural Element

The instance element contains the value associated with a form field's multiple instances. Fields encoded as an instance should also include the values of each instance as a hidden field. The hidden field should be appended with the index number for the instance. Thus if the field is "firstName" each instance would be named "firstName_1", "firstName_2", "firstName_3", etc...

Parent

Children

Attributes

Example needed.

item

Rich Text Container

Structural Element

The item element is a rich text container used to display textual data in a list. As a rich text container it can contain hyperlinks, emphasized blocks of text, images and form fields in addition to plain text.

The item element can be associated with a label that directly precedes it. The Schema requires that if one item in a list has an associated label, then all other items must have one as well. This mitigates the problem of loose connections between elements that is commonly encountered in XHTML, since every item in particular list has the same structure.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<list n="list-example"
	id="XMLExample.list.list-example">
  <head> Example List </head>
   <item> This is the first item
	</item> <item> This is the second item with <hi ...>highlighted text</hi>,
	<xref ...> a link</xref> and an <figure
	...>image</figure>.</item>
  ...
  <list n="list-example2"
	id="XMLExample.list.list-example2">
    <head> Example List </head>
    <label>ITEM ONE:</label>
     <item> This is the first item
	</item>
    <label>ITEM TWO:</label>
     <item> This is the second item with <hi ...>highlighted
	text</hi>, <xref ...> a link</xref> and an <figure
	...>image</figure>.</item>
    <label>ITEM THREE:</label>
     <item> This is the third item with a <field ...> ... </field>
	</item>
    ...
  </list>
   <item> This is the third item in the list
	</item>
  ...
</list>

label

Text Container

Structural Element

The label element is associated with an item and annotates that item with a number, a textual description of some sort, or a simple bullet.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<list n="list-example"
	id="XMLExample.list.list-example">
  <head>Example List</head>
   <label>1</label>
  <item> This is the first item  </item>
   <label>2</label>
  <item> This is the second item with <hi ...>highlighted text</hi>,
	<xref ...> a link</xref> and an <figure
	...>image</figure>.</item>
  ...
  <list n="list-example2"
	id="XMLExample.list.list-example2">
    <head>Example Sublist</head>
     <label>ITEM
	ONE:</label>
    <item> This is the first item  </item>
     <label>ITEM
	TWO:</label>
    <item> This is the second item with <hi ...>highlighted
	text</hi>, <xref ...> a link</xref> and an <figure
	...>image</figure>.</item>
     <label>ITEM
	THREE:</label>
    <item> This is the third item with a <field ...> ... </field>
	</item>
    ...
  </list>
  <item> This is the third item in the list </item>
  ...
</list>

list

Structural Element

The list element is used to display sets of sequential data. It contains an optional head element, as well as any number of item and list elements. Items contain textual information, while sublists contain other item or list elements. An item can also be associated with a label element that annotates an item with a number, a textual description of some sort, or a simple bullet. The list type (ordered, bulleted, gloss, etc.) is then determined either by the content of labels on items or by an explicit value of the type attribute. Note that if labels are used in conjunction with any items in a list, all of the items in that list must have a label. It is also recommended to avoid mixing label styles unless an explicit type is specified.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<div ...>
  ...
   <list n="list-example"
	id="XMLExample.list.list-example">
    <head>Example List</head>
    <item> ... </item>
    <item> ... </item>
    ...
     <list n="list-example2"
	id="XMLExample.list.list-example2">
      <head>Example Sublist</head>
      <label> ... </label>
      <item> ... </item>
      <label> ... </label>
      <item> ... </item>
      <label> ... </label>
      <item> ... </item>
      ...
     </list>
    <label> ... </label>
    <item> ... </item>
    ...
   </list>
</div>

META

Top-Level Container

The meta element is a top level element and exists directly inside the document element. It serves as a container element for all metadata associated with a document broken up into categories according to the type of metadata they carry.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<document version=1.0>
   <meta>
    <userMeta> ... </userMeta>
    <pageMeta> ... </pageMeta>
    <repositoryMeta> ... </repositoryMeta>
   </meta>
  <body> ... </body>
  <options> ... </options>
</document>

metadata

Text Container

Structural Element

The metadata element carries generic metadata information in the form on an attribute-value pair. The type of information it contains is determined by two attributes: element, which specifies the general type of metadata stored, and an optional qualifier attribute that narrows the type down. The standard representation for this pairing is element.qualifier. The actual metadata is contained in the text of the tag itself. Additionally, a language attribute can be used to specify the language used for the metadata entry.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<meta>
  <userMeta>
     <metadata element="identifier" qualifier="firstName"> Bob
	</metadata> <metadata element="identifier" qualifier="lastName"> Jones
	</metadata> <metadata ...> ...
	</metadata>
    ...
  </userMeta>
  <pageMeta>
     <metadata element="rights"
	qualifier="accessRights">user</metadata> <metadata ...> ...
	</metadata>
    ...
  </pageMeta>
</meta>

OPTIONS

Top-Level Container

The options element is the main container for all actions and navigation options available to the user. It consists of any number of list elements whose items contain navigation information and actions. While any list of navigational options may be contained in this element, it is suggested that at least the following 5 lists be included.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<document version=1.0>

    <meta> ... </meta>

    <body> ... </body>

    <options>

        <list n="navigation-example1"
	id="XMLExample.list.navigation-example1">

            <head>Example Navigation List 1</head>

            <item><xref target="/link/to/option">Option
	One</xref></item>

            <item><xref target="/link/to/option">Option
	two</xref></item>

                ...

        </list>

        <list n="navigation-example2"
	id="XMLExample.list.navigation-example2">

            <head>Example Navigation List 2</head>

            <item><xref target="/link/to/option">Option
	One</xref></item>

            <item><xref target="/link/to/option">Option
	two</xref></item>

            ...

        </list>

        ...

    </options>

</document>

p

Rich Text Container

Structural Element

The p element is a rich text container used by divs to display textual data in a paragraph format. As a rich text container it can contain hyperlinks, emphasized blocks of text, images and form fields in addition to plain text.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<div n="division-example"
	id="XMLExample.div.division-example">

     <p> This is a regular paragraph.
	</p> <p> This text is normal, while <hi rend="bold">this text is bold
	and this text is <hi rend="italic">bold and italic.</hi></hi>
	</p> <p> This paragraph contains a <xref
	target="/link/target">link</xref>, a static <figure
	source="/image.jpg">image</figure>, and a <figure target=
	"/link/target" source="/image.jpg">image link.</figure>
	</p>

</div>

pageMeta

Metadata Element

The pageMeta element contains metadata associated with the document itself. It contains generic metadata elements to carry the content, and any number of trail elements to provide information on the user's current location in the system. Required and suggested values for metadata elements contained in pageMeta include but are not limited to:

See the metadata and trail tag entries for more information on their structure.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<meta>

    <userMeta> ... </userMeta>

     <pageMeta>

        <metadata element="title">Example DRI
	page</metadata>

        <metadata
	element="contextPath">/xmlui/</metadata>

        <metadata ...> ... </metadata>

        ...

        <trail source="123456789/6"> A bread crumb item
	</trail>

        <trail ...> ... </trail>

        ...

     </pageMeta>

</meta>

params

Structural Component

The params element identifies extra parameters used to build a form field. There are several attributes that may be available for this element depending on the field type.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>

    <field id="XMLExample.field.name" n="name" type="text"
	required="yes">

         <params size="16"
	maxlength="32"/>

        <help>Some help text with <i18n>localized
	content</i18n>.</help>

        <default>Default value goes here</default>

    </field>

</p>

reference

Metadata Reference Element

reference is a reference element used to access information stored in an external metadata file. The url attribute is used to locate the external metadata file. The type attribute provides a short limited description of the referenced object's type.

reference elements can be both contained by includeSet elements and contain includeSets themselves, making the structure recursive.

Parent

Children

Attributes

            <includeSet n="browse-list"
	id="XMLTest.includeSet.browse-list">
             <reference url="/metadata/handle/123/4/mets.xml"
	repositoryID="123" type="DSpace
	Item"/> <reference url="/metadata/handle/123/5/mets.xml"
	repositoryID="123" />
            ...
            </includeSet>

referenceSet

Metadata Reference Element

The referenceSet element is a container of artifact or repository references.

Parent

Children

Attributes

            <div ...>
            <head> Example Division </head>
            <p> ... </p>
            <table> ... </table>
            <list>
            ...
            </list>
             <referenceSet n="browse-list"
	id="XMLTest.referenceSet.browse-list" type="summaryView"
	informationModel="DSpace">
            <head>A header for the includeset</head>
            <reference
	url="/metadata/handle/123/34/mets.xml"/>
            <reference
	url=""metadata/handle/123/34/mets.xml/>
             </referenceSet>
            ...
            </p>

repository

Metadata Element

The repository element is used to describe the repository. Its principal component is a set of structural metadata that carrier information on how the repository's objects under objectMeta are related to each other. The principal method of encoding these relationships at the time of this writing is a METS document, although other formats, like RDF, may be employed in the future.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<repositoryMeta>

     <repository repositoryID="123456789"
	url="/metadata/handle/1234/4/mets.xml" />

</repositoryMeta>

repositoryMeta

Metadata Element

The repositoryMeta element contains metadata references about the repositories used in the used or referenced in the document. It can contain any number of repository elements.

See the repository tag entry for more information on the structure of repository elements.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<meta>

  <userMeta> ... </usermeta>

  <pageMeta> ... </pageMeta>

     <repositoryMeta>

        <repository repositoryIID="..." url="..."
	/>

     </repositoryMeta>

</meta>

row

Structural Element

The row element is contained inside a table and serves as a container of cell elements. A required role attribute determines how the row and its cells are rendered.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<table n="table-example" id="XMLExample.table.table-example" rows="2"
	cols="3">

     <row
	role="head">

      <cell cols="2">Data Label One and
	Two</cell>

        <cell>Data Label Three</cell>

        ...

     </row> <row>

      <cell> Value One </cell>

      <cell> Value Two </cell>

      <cell> Value Three </cell>

      ...

     </row>

    ...

</table>

table

Structural Element

The table element is a container for information presented in tabular format. It consists of a set of row elements and an optional header.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<div n="division-example"
	id="XMLExample.div.division-example">

     <table n="table1" id="XMLExample.table.table1" rows="2"
	cols="3">

        <row role="head">

          <cell cols="2">Data Label One and
	Two</cell>

            <cell>Data Label Three</cell>

            ...

        </row>

        <row>

          <cell> Value One </cell>

          <cell> Value Two </cell>

          <cell> Value Three </cell>

          ...

        </row>

        ...

     </table>
    ...
</div>

trail

Text Container

Metadata Element

The trail element carries information about the user's current location in the system relative of the repository's root page. Each instance of the element serves as one link in the path from the root to the current page.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<pageMeta>

    <metadata element="title">Example DRI
	page</metadata>

    <metadata
	element="contextPath">/xmlui/</metadata>

    <metadata ...> ... </metadata>

    ...

     <trail target="/myDSpace"> A bread crumb item pointing to a
	page. </trail> <trail ...> ... </trail>

    ...

</pageMeta>

userMeta

Metadata Element

The userMeta element contains metadata associated with the user that requested the document. It contains generic metadata elements, which in turn carry the information. Required and suggested values for metadata elements contained in userMeta include but not limited to:

See the metadata tag entry for more information on the structure of metadata elements.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<meta>

     <userMeta>

        <metadata element="identifier" qualifier="email">bobJones@tamu.edu</metadata>

        <metadata element="identifier" qualifier="firstName">Bob</metadata>

        <metadata element="identifier" qualifier="lastName">Jones</metadata>

        <metadata element="rights" qualifier="accessRights">user</metadata>

        <metadata ...> ... </metadata>

        ...

        <trail source="123456789/6">A bread crumb item</trail>

        <trail ...> ... </trail>

        ...

     </userMeta>

    <pageMeta> ... </pageMeta>

</meta>

value

Rich Text Container

Structural Element

The value element contains the value associated with a form field and can serve a different purpose for various field types. The value element is comprised of two subelements: the raw element which stores the unprocessed value directly from the user of other source, and the interpreted element which stores the value in a format appropriate for display to the user, possibly including rich text markup.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>
  <hi> ... </hi>
  <xref> ... </xref>
  <figure> ... </figure>
  <field id="XMLExample.field.name" n="name" type="text"
	required="yes">
    <params size="16" maxlength="32"/>
    <help>Some help text with <i18n>localized
	content</i18n>.</help>
     <value type="default">Author,
	John</value>
  </field>
</p>

xref

Text Container

Structural Element

The xref element is a reference to an external document. It can be mixed freely with text, and any text within the tag itself will be used as part of the link's visual body.

Parent

Children

Attributes

<p>
     <xref target="/url/link/target">This text is shown as a link.</xref>
</p>