Tag Archives: XML

VRA Core and its use of xml:lang

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Some information professionals might be confused about the use of language identification metadata in larger bibliographic metadata standards. For example, VRA Core (Visual Resources Association)is a metadata standard which is used to describe visual artifacts. It is implemented in XML and therefore takes on all the descriptive power of XML. Including the use of the xml:lang attribute.

The following observations are made using the VRA (Visual Resources Association) Core 4 XML Schema, version 0.42. This schema implements the final VRA Core 4.0 guidelines, 2007-04-09. It is important to note that in these metadata standards implemented by memory institutions there are really two parts, the first is the "guidelines" and then there is the "implementation" of those guidelines (in this case as an XSD validation file). These two documents may not always be congruent even if that is the intention. In these cases I argue that what is valid is the technical implementation over the guidelines as that seems to be the best way to argue the definitive authority.

The XSD validation document contains the following annotation around the use of the xml:lang attribute.

VRA Core metadata attributes which can be applied to virtually any element. Note that xml:lang should contain ISO 639 language codes, not the English names of languages. Although the XML Schema defines xml:lang as allowing ISO 639-2 (three-letter) codes, some validators will only accept ISO 639-1 (two-letter) codes.

This annotation is misleading. First, the VRA Core authors are trying to alert catalogers and technologists that they need to not use the full text name value as might be done in other "library oriented standards", but rather they need to use language codes. In general this is a good thing. However, the VRA authors fail to understand the XML specification. Specifically, they indicate the need to use ISO 639 language codes. This is not true. XML needs to use BCP-47 language codes. This can be found in the specification for XML 1.0 fifth edition §2.12 https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#sec-lang-tag. It is true that BCP-47 currently calls for the use of ISO 639 codes, but this might not always be true.

A second issue with the annotation is how the annotation distinguishes use between ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-1. If there are VRA Core data consumers or producers who are not consuming or producing valid XML then this is a transmission machinery issue not a protocol issue. BCP-47 does not call for the use of ISO 639-2/3 tas when there is an equivalent ISO 639-1 tag. If data ingest processes have only implemented ingest of ISO 639-1 then they haven't implemented VRA because VRA stands on XML which stands on BCP-47. BCP-47 is an algorithm which calls upon different standards at different times. Understanding the fall back nature of the algorithm would have clarified this point for VRA authors.

The following resources are useful for a better understanding of Language Tags in XML:

BibTex Materials in XML Markup

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It seems that BibTeX materials can be written as XML.

Here are some resources I found on this:

  • a python2 script: https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~sprenkle/bibtex2html/bibtex2xml.py
  • an overview presentation: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8c8e/44b18bacac15f14113af3d4b55f028e0a842.pdf
  • Software Package: http://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/hpsg/archive/projects/bibtex2html/
  • Prior research: https://web.science.mq.edu.au/~rdale/resources/bibtex/index.html
  • maybe some XSLT files: https://sourceforge.net/projects/bibtexml/

Hugo and XML

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I did not know that Hugo could query XML...

I discovered this.... this is in fact really exciting news.

Three tools for study:

  • https://gohugo.io/functions/transform.unmarshal/#xml-data
  • https://github.com/gohugoio/hugoDocs/issues/1622
  • https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/parsing-xml-in-data-with-hugos-new-xml-support-attributes/36654

XML formats for publishing

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  1. TEI based XML format at DHQ. Documentation.
  2. JATS based XML at de Gruyter and tons of other publishers.
  3. DocBook and Balisage-1.3 at Balisage. Example
  4. XLingPaper XML —

https://relaxng.org/tutorial-20011203.html
https://www.w3.org/2000/04/schema_hack/

https://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol21/print/Tovey01/BalisageVol21-Tovey01.html

https://typeset.io/resources/typeset-evolving-into-scispace/
https://typeset.io/resources/jats-xml-everything-a-publisher-needs-to-know/

JATS in multilingual books:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK579699/

JATS
https://www.escienceediting.org/upload/kcse-284.pdf
https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/jats-con/2013/presentations/graham2013.pdf
https://github.com/ncbi/JATSPreviewStylesheets/blob/master/xslt/main/jats-xslfo.xsl
https://assets.pubpub.org/z1qlpyk6/01566244075411.pdf

https://av.tib.eu/media/51339
https://github.com/pkp/texture
https://jats.niso.org/jatswiki/index.php/Tools
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK425544/

Interesting examples:
https://typeset.io/papers/defining-a-linguistic-area-south-asia-gilv2538jj
Pricing:
https://typeset.io/account/pricing/?source=plans-billing-page

MODS and element order

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Is element order a thing in XML? That is is the order of appearance of sibling elements within an XML document critical?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28268696/is-the-order-of-two-siblings-implementation-dependent
https://xmltutorial.info/xml/node-relationships/

Here is the response from the XSD author:

I haven’t read the entire thread, but I take it the question is whether elements in a mods record need to be in a particular order (i.e. in the order that they are listed in the schema). They don’t.

In the MODS schema, look for:

*********************************************************************** ** Definition of a single MODS record ** **********************************************************************

And following that:

<xs:element name="mods" type="modsDefinition"/>
<!-- -->
<xs:complexType name="modsDefinition">
<xs:group ref="modsGroup" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>

……….

This says: a MODS record consists of one or more elements from the “modsGroup (at least one, because that is the default if there is no minOccurs, and as many as you want because maxOccurs=“unbounded”) enclosed within a element.

Next, look for:

*********************************************************************** ** These are the "top level" MODS elements ** ********************************************************************** —>

prior to that:

<xs:group name="modsGroup”>
<xs:choice>

…. and following it is the list of elements:


<xs:element ref="abstract"/>
<xs:element ref="accessCondition"/>
<xs:element ref="classification"/>
<xs:element ref="extension"/>
<xs:element ref="genre"/>
<xs:element ref="identifier"/>
<xs:element ref="language"/>
<xs:element ref="location"/>

……………. and so on.

“Choice: says “choose any one of these elements."

So all together, it says choose an elements from the list. Any element. And then repeat as desired.

So you could choose “genre”, and then choose “classification”, and so on. Chosen in no particular order.

And then enclose your list within a 

<mods>

record, in the order in which you chose the elements.

Ray

Excel, XML, and CSV

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I never thought the day would come when I would say that I wished that I had a Windows version of MS Excel. I am simply aghast. But never-the-less I have been looking for an XML parsing solution for OS X and can not find one which is graphically oriented.

I want to move certain XML encoded content to my blog and the best way (that I can figure) to do this is to import CSV files (although there is a WordPress plugin for importing XML).

I want to be able to do this, but the Mac version of Excel does not do this:

I really want to drag and drop, but this tutorial makes it look easy-ish to do at the command line. http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/oracle-sql-programming/how-to-convert-xml-to-csv-and-upload-into-oracle/


What am I Using this for? Well I would like to use it with itunes XML, Endnote XML, Bookpedia XML, BibTeXXML, SIL-OLAC data as XML, WorldCat Data as XML? Glotalogue data as XML.

Audio Dominant Texts and Text Dominant Audio

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As linguistics and language documentation interface with digital humanities there has been a lot of effort to time-align texts and audio/video materials. At one level this is rather trivial to do and has the backing of comercial media processes like subtitles in movies. However, at another level this task is often done in XML for every project (digital corpus curation) slightly differently. At the macro-scale the argument is that if the annotation of the audio is in XML and someone wants to do something else with it, then they can just convert the XML to whatever schema they desire. This is true.

However, one antidotal point that I have not heard in discussion of time aligned texts is specifications for Audio Dominant Text vs. Text Dominant Audio. This may not initially seem very important, so let me explain what I mean.
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