It is good to see early examples of EAD finding aids being delivered on the
Web. Thanks to Paul and others who are sharing these.
However, I would like to suggest that perspective users try a different
approach than that listed below for getting your EAD files XML aware.
The following text is taken from the forthcoming EAD Application Guidelines
and describe the changes that need to be made to the ead.dtd file and the
proper DOCTYPE declaration for xml.
Note, for example, that eadchars.ent is no longer required or reference to
any characters as XML is Unicode based.
From the Application Guidelines:
4.3.2.1 Changes in the DTD Files
If the DTD is to be used with XML applications such as validating
processors, one change must first be made to the "ead.dtd" file. There is a
section towards the end of the file headed "SGML EADNOTAT AND EADCHARS
INCLUSION/EXCLUSION." At the end of this section, there is an entity
reference that reads "<!ENTITY % sgml 'INCLUDE' >". To "switch off" SGML
compatibility and "switch on" XML compatibility, change 'INCLUDE' to
'IGNORE'.
When you make this change, observe that the explanatory note in this section
of the DTD file points out that "for XML, the eadnotat.ent file should be
invoked in the declaration subset of [the] individual instance." This means
that the file "eadnotat.ent" must be declared explicitly as an entity in
each EAD instance that contains links to notational (non-textual) data such
as graphics files. For XML instances, the prolog of EAD-encoded finding
aids should therefore read:
<!DOCTYPE ead PUBLIC "-//Society of American Archivists//DTD
ead.dtd (Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Version 1.0)//EN" "ead.dtd"
[
<!ENTITY % eadnotat PUBLIC "-//Society of American
Archivists//DTD eadnotat.ent (Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Notation
Declarations Version 1.0)//EN" "eadnotat.ent">
%eadnotat;
]>
While it is not necessary to declare the notation file eadnotat.ent if the
finding aid does not contain a graphic file, it is probably simplest to add
it in all cases as a default. Note that the Uniform Resource Identifiers
(URI), in this case simple file names that point to the ead.dtd and
eadnotat.ent files, must point to the exact physical location of these two
files on your system. Their content may therefore vary from the above
examples according to local file storage practices.
4.3.2.2. Case Sensitivity
Markup in SGML is not case sensitive for element or attribute names. For
compatibility with the Unicode character set specifications, XML markup is
case sensitive for this data; EAD element and attribute names must therefore
be in lower case for XML compliance. Some SGML authoring or parsing
software automatically writes out such names in upper case; the resulting
files must be edited to change all attribute and element names to lower
case. A conversion macro written for Microsoft Word is available via the
EAD Help Pages.
4.3.2.3. Processing Instructions
Processing instructions (PIs) are an SGML device for inserting into a
document information that is intended for processing by a proprietary
software application rather than a parser. While PIs may be used for a
variety of purposes and may appear anywhere within an SGML instance, a PI
declaring that the file is in the XML format must come at the very beginning
of the file, preceding the DOCTYPE declaration. All XML instances must
begin with a PI that contains three elements: the XML version employed;
whether the document uses an external DTD such as EAD; and optionally, the
Unicode character encoding scheme utilized (such as UTF-8). A typical EAD
PI might read:
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no" encoding="UTF-8"?>
4.3.2.4. Empty Elements
Finally, SGML and XML differ in the markup syntax for elements declared to
be "empty" in the DTD; that is, elements that contain neither other elements
nor PCDATA. The relevant EAD elements are <lb>, <extptr>, <extptrloc>,
<ptr>, and <ptrloc>. Except for <lb>, which is a formatting device, these
are all linking elements that utilize attribute values to point to other
locations or files. In SGML, "empty" elements require only a start-tag
(e.g., <lb>). XML adds an additional form called the "empty-element tag"
which has the syntax <lb/>. While both formats are technically valid in
XML, the XML standard declares that the "empty-element tag" form must be
employed "for interoperability." While the meaning of this statement is
admittedly vague, it is easiest simply to use the empty-element-tag syntax
(<lb/>) as your default in XML documents.
If you have IE 5, you can retrieve another example of an EAD finding aid,
encoded in xml, that uses an xsl stylesheet to generate a display in your
browser in real time, at
http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00020s.xml
I would appreciate advice from anyone who can tell me why the hyperlinks
from the <organization> section to the individual <c01>s don't work. The
other internal links are ok. But I can't get the stylesheet to generate an
attribute value containing the number of a child element relative to its
parent, i.e that this is the first item in a list, the second item in a
list, etc.
Michael
Michael Fox
Head of Processing
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Blvd West
St. Paul MN 55102-1906
phone: 651-296-1014
fax: 651-296-9961
[log in to unmask]
**NOTE NEW AREA CODE EFFECTIVE JULY 12, 1998**
> ----------
> From: Paul Kiel[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 1999 9:23 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list EAD
> Subject: IE5.0 - XML sans plugin
>
> Mail*Link(r) SMTP IE5.0 - XML sans plugin
>
> Greetings,
>
> I am interested to see if people have been successful getting their EAD
> documents to display in the new Internet Explorer 5.0. With some
> machinations I have had success. While there was a bit of effort, it was
> simpler than the plugin problems. Being able to serve up directly to the
> browser was the fulfillment of the promise for so long.
>
> My testing included no stylesheet for this (CSS or XSL) so IE displays the
> tags basically like Explorer displays directories. You can click on the
> directory with a "+" and expand to see the tags within it or click on "-"
> to
> shrink the subtags. Finally, I must admit to some sloppiness. I used the
> EAD1.0 dtd with beta documents, so please overlook the testing
> compromises.
>
> Using IE5.0 look at:
>
> http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/libraries/archives/collections/test/
>
> (brown.xml and kamphoef.xml are full length documents and take a second to
> load, the others are collection level only and illustrate the effect a bit
> faster)
>
> Here is what I had to do to make it work:
>
> 1) have your server configured for the xml mime-type (text/xml xml)
>
> 2) make sure the DOCTYPE tag includes the filename reference "ead.dtd" (be
> careful of case) ex:
> <!DOCTYPE EAD PUBLIC "-//Society of American Archivists//DTD ead.dtd
> (Encoded
> Archival Description (EAD))//EN" "ead.dtd">
>
> 3) rename files with extension ".xml"
>
> 4) do the same with the EADID tag
>
> 5) include in the public identifiers the actual filename as follows:
>
> <!ENTITY % eadbase PUBLIC
> "-//Society of American Archivists//DTD eadbase.ent (Encoded Archival
> Description (EAD) Basic Declarations Version 1.0)//EN" "eadbase.ent" >
>
> <!ENTITY % eadchars PUBLIC
> "-//Society of American Archivists//DTD eadchars.ent (Encoded Archival
> Description (EAD) Special Characters Version 1.0)//EN" "eadchars.ent" >
>
> <!ENTITY % eadnotat PUBLIC
> "-//Society of American Archivists//DTD eadnotat.ent (Encoded Archival
> Description (EAD) Notation Declarations Version 1.0)//EN" "eadnotat.ent" >
>
> 6) you will need to do the same with the SPECIAL CHARACTER ISO ENTITY
> SETS.
> For testing, I simply commented these references out - which means I
> couldn't
> display the copyright symbol and changed it in the documents to say
> "copyright" instead. Adding direct references would correct this I am
> sure.
>
> Notes: For a review of IE5.0 look at www.xml.com. Also, XML did not make
> it
> into the help files of IE, so don't even try and look at documention.
>
> I would love to hear other experiences with this,
>
> Paul Kiel
> -------------------------------------------
> W. Paul Kiel
> Interim Head
> NCSU Libraries Special Collections
> http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/libraries/archives/
> Box 7111
> North Carolina State University
> Raleigh, NC 27695-7111
> voice: 919.515.8119
> fax: 919.515.3628
> Internet: [log in to unmask]
> ------------------------------
>
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