Le Jardin de François

107

Labels, Spots & Chains

Elsewhere I have suggested that Kari Kraus's musings on accidentals and substantives led me to contemplate using an ID/IDREF mechanism to assist an XSLT transformtion in selecting which of two different characters would appear at a specific spot. The Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines provide the author with the possibility of using the value of the "exclude" attribute on the <c> element (the attribute is also available for other elements). A fine mechanism for exclusive alteration. Great for providing a use case for the teaching a module of XSLT relating to the application of the xsl:if element using a test on an attribute value.

When I encountered another use case, it became interesting to consider inclusive alternation as again, the appearance (or not) of the content of an element in a specific spot. I was rather pleased to be able to consider inclusive alternation in relation to position. Again the ID/IDREF mechanism assists in expressing a relation in XML markup that can then be transformed in XSLT.

<title> <w next="MetaM" id="HyperM">HyperMnemonics</w> ... <w prev="HyperM" id="MetaM">MetaMimetics</w> </title>

Handy for introducing the xsl:choose element with xsl:when testing on the value of "prev" and "next" attributes and supplying an xsl:otherwise option. A yen for reversals and XPATH can make an appearance in the lesson play with the use of following::sibling and preceding::sibling to accomplish some matches.

The Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines also provide for the markup of morphemes for the hypermimetic. And for the metamnemonic there is some XSLT that concatenates the content of a <num> element of type "accession" with the content of a <label> element of type "category" to create an HTML anchor element in the output (i.e. <a name="#label_num"></a>).

The memory part is about getting the correct label attached to the correct spot. Imitation, like acting, is about threading labels and spots into dismantle-able chains.

modeling

104

Title Tracking

Elsewhere, I have remarked that blog authors can and do play with the serial potential of titles to entries and how searching and ordering provide alternative reading paths. Part of this observation comes from attempting to model the content of a blog in XML following the Guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative. The other part came from authoring in TEI. Both trajectories involve encounters with structure.

I chose to model blog entries using the <div> element. The <title> element appears as a child of the <head> element which is itself a child of the <div> element.

Other content models are possible. Common content models mean predictable structure and if structures are predicatble and common, then processing modules such as XSLT and CSS files can be swapped.

If several blogs and authors use the same content model, it becomes possible to research patterns over time. Imagine: author So-and-so favoured titles consisting of adverbs beginning with such-and-such a letter for a run of such-and-such a number of entries and when the author broke the pattern a ripple was felt in a particular cluster of blogs. A dream of formalist feedback!

modeling