Rick,
My notes from the Valentine's Day meeting in NYC said that Harvard
requested a "TYPE" attribute for <div>. I remember agreeing verbally and
seeing the kinds of uses you suggest for it. In building our <div> trees
for complex multimedia objects, LC is following a controlled vocabulary
but putting the text into the div LABEL. So far that's working OK but
most of our subobjects have generic names that are essentially
'types'--container, disc side, booklet. If we wanted to describe
something that had both a generic description--say, 'booklet' as well as
a title--say, "Complete Discography of Spinal Tap"--I think lumping it all
into a LABEL attribute is not as helpful it might be to give booklet as
the type and the title as the label.
Dick Thaxter
On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Rick Beaubien wrote:
> When comparing the METS schema with the MOA2.DTD recently, I realized that
> while the MOA2 DTD provides for a TYPE attribute in <div> elements, there
> is currently no corresponding attribute for "divType" elements in METS. I
> would like to request that an optional "TYPE" attribute be added to the
> attribute list for "divType" elements. The TYPE attribute would provide a
> means for specifying the category to which to which a division of an object
> belongs and of clarifying its role within the hierarchy of an object as a
> whole. For example, in the case of a book the root div would be of TYPE
> "book"; under this there might be <div>s of TYPE "chapter" and under these,
> <div>s of TYPE "page". In the case of a photoalbum, the sequence of div
> TYPEs might be: photoalbum, page, photo, photodetail.
>
> I think that the div TYPE could be an important basis for providing for
> certain type of functionality in tools that work either directly or
> indirectly off of METS objects. Granted, my MOA2 object navigation tools
> currently make fairly minor uses of the div TYPE attribute. For example,
> the div TYPE is the basis for selecting a style sheet for the presentation
> of the descriptive metadata associated with a div. And the TYPE attribute
> provides a fallback to the LABEL attribute for labeling a div in the
> document "table of contents" when no LABEL is present.
>
> But more importantly, more sophisticated tools in the future could
> conceivably put the TYPE attribute to much more sophisticated uses. For
> example, a viewer tool might want to make certain image manipulation
> functions available for divs of TYPE "photo" in a photoalbum; or it might
> want to provide indexed access to the divs of TYPE "entry" in a diary.
>
> Of course, the usefulness of a div TYPE attribute will hinge on there being
> some vocabulary control. While this may be difficult to implement across
> institutional boundaries, at least within an institution enough control to
> make a div TYPE attribute functionally useful should be possible.
>
> Rick Beaubien
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Rick Beaubien
>
> Software Engineer: Research and Development
> Library Systems Office
> Rm 386 Doe Library
> University of California
> Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
> 510-643-9776
>
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* Dick Thaxter [log in to unmask] 202 707-7208 *
* Automation Specialist *
* Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division *
* Library of Congress *
* The usual disclaimers apply *
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