Diff:Dec 2009 & Jul 2011

The 15 July 2011 release represents a major release, sufficiently different and richer than previous ones to justify a new version number and a new namespace version. Many modifications were introduced in intermediate tentative releases throughout 2010 and 2011.
In order to allow a smooth transition to Akoma Ntoso 2.0, this release will accept and support both namespace declarations.

General changes

Namespace declaration can be either http://www.akomantoso.org/1.0 or http://www.akomantoso.org/2.0 . This is the only release to exist in both namespaces. Subsequent releases will only use the 2.0 namespace.
An improved specification of the naming convention is presented, introducing the few elements that remained to align it to the CEN Metalex naming convention.
Multi-linguism

The specification of the human language in which the document was written has always been rented out to a specific part of the Akoma Ntoso naming convention, but is not specified anywhere in the metadata of the document, so that the metadata is not a superset of the information that can be derived from the document’s name, contrarily to the CEN Metalex specifications. Furthermore, it has not be possible, so far, to specify multiple languages for the same document, nor indicating exceptions to the main language of the document, nor specifying the language history of a document,
In this release a number of improvements and additions was made, so that real language annotations can be expressed on the document.
- Specifying the main language(s) of a document: the new expression-level FRBRlanguage element was added to the FRBRExpression structure of the metadata, where the main language(s) of the document are specified using the codes of RFC 4646. If more than one language are present in this specific expression, then the FRBRlanguage element can be repeated.
- Specifying the actual language of individual fragments of the text: text fragments in a language different from the language specified in the FRBRlanguage needs to be wrapped in a element (if none appropriate exists, a span element) and the xml:lang attribute needs to be used in the fragment with the appropriate RFC4646 code. if two or more FRBRlanguage elements exist, every fragment of the text needs to have its own xml:lang attribute according to the specifications of http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/, section 2.12.
- Specifying translations: the expression-level FRBRtranslation element, available in the FRBRExpression structure allows to specify that the document is a (authoritative/non authoritative/unknown according to attribute authoritative) translation from a different language (attribute language) made by some agent (attribute by) of another expression (attribute href).
- Attribute “pivot” is available in FRBRTranslation elements to specify the pivot language for non-final translations (e.g., in a translation from Danish to Italian through English, two FRBRTranslation elements need to be added, the first of which will have pivot=”eng” to specify the destination language of the non-final translation. Also, attribute language is now fromLanguage.
New document collection document types

It has recently become apparent that some new types of documents are of interest and need to be taken into consideration. These documents are not containers of (structured or semi-structured) text, but containers of documents that have their own identity and independent addressability. Issues of the Official Gazette, and amendment lists are clear examples of these situations.
A new class of documents has therefore been created, documentCollection, with its own external structure (metadata, preface, conclusions and attachments), and an internal content, the collection itself, composed of either other Akoma Ntoso documents (including acts, bills, minutes, etc.), or interstitial containers of text that separate each document, as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<akomaNtoso>
<documentCollection>
<meta>
... the metadata of the collection ...
</meta>
<preface>
... the preface of the collection ...
</preface>
<collectionContent>
<act>
<meta>
... the metadata of the first document ...
</meta>
<preface>
... the preface of the first document ...
</preface>
<body>
... the body of the first document ...
</body>
</act>
<interstitial id=”int1”>
Any text is in the collection but

belongs to no individual document
</interstitial>
<act>
<meta>
...the metadata of the second document...
</meta>
<preface>
...the preface of the second document...
</preface>
<body>
...the body of the second document...
</body>
</act>
... other documents and interstitials...

</collectionContent>
</documentCollection>
</akomaNtoso>
- Document collections can have any number of documents and interstitial elements in any order, and it is possible to have interstitial elements at the beginning of the document.
- Components can be present in place, or refer to them via a URI to an external resource, or even placed in the document in an apposite final section called components, and referred to via a newly introduced componentRef element. This modification affects also attachments, which can now be referenced in the same way via a componentRef element. Element attachment within element attachments has therefore been removed. Furthermore, in order to avoid ambiguity of element names, previous elements components and component in FRBR structures are now called componentInfo and componentData respectively.
New Amendment document type

A new document type, amendment, has been added, with accompanying subelements amendmentHeading, amendmentContent, amendmentReference and amendmentJustification and many inline additions.
Time intervals

Managing time intervals in text has been completely modified: attributes start, end, startEfficacy and endEfficacy have been replaced with a single period attribute, and a new metadata section temporalData has been added, containing a list of temporalGroup elements that contain timeInterval elements.
While before one would use the start, end, startEfficacy and endEfficacy attributes to specify the beginning and end, respectively, of in force and efficacy intervals, respectively, the procedure has now been considerably simplified and streamlined and modularized. In the text, a single period attribute is used instead of the four previous attributes, containing a reference pointing to the newly introduced temporalGroup element in the metadata section. Each temporalGroup contains a list of timeInterval elements, each specifying a time interval and a type in terms of the Akoma Ntoso ontology, as follows:

Before:
<metadata>
<lifecycle source="#fv">
<event id="e1" date="1997-08-29" source="#ro1" type="generation" refersTo="#LegislativeCreation"/>
<event id="e2" date="2003-12-19" source="#rp1" type="modification" refersTo="#LegislativeModification"/>
</lifecycle>
...
</metadata>
<body>
...
"pooled fund" means a fund established by a limited liability company, other than an approved issuer, for purposes of pooling scheme funds for collective investment; 
...
</body>
After:
<metadata>
<temporalData source="#FV">
<temporalGroup id="p1">
<timeInterval start="#e1" end="#e2" refersTo="#inforce"/>
</temporalGroup>
</temporalData>
<lifecycle source="#fv">
<event id="e1" date="1997-08-29" source="#ro1" type="generation" refersTo="#LegislativeCreation"/>
<event id="e2" date="2003-12-19" source="#rp1" type="modification" refersTo="#LegislativeModification"/>
</lifecycle>
...
</metadata>
<body>
...
"pooled fund" means a fund established by a limited liability company, other than an approved issuer, for purposes of pooling scheme funds for collective investment; 
...
</body>

Time intervals can be specified either by a begin and end date, or with either date and a duration. The advantages of this approach are many:
- It is possible to introduce time intervals with either two dates, or a start date and a duration or an end date and a duration.
- It is possible to specify in force intervals, efficacy intervals and any other type of time information without cluttering the actual content of the document with more and more start and end attributes.
- Time information shared by many different elements in the document are grouped in a single collection, so that it becomes possible to understand at a glance how many intervals are relevant for the document.
- It is possible to include different and incompatible time information details by different scholars without cluttering with useless information the actual content of the document.
Footnotes and out-of-lines
- In past versions of the Akoma Ntoso standard, footnotes (element note) and side notes (element outOfLine)
  were considered editorial content that are not really part of the authoritative content of the document. This is neither universal nor frequent. In fact, in many cases the official author of the document uses footnotes and out of line elements such as side notes as an additional means to convey authoritative content. For this reason, the notes’ model has been simplified:
- inlineNote are now called authorialNote,
- outOfLineNotes have been removed.
  Attribute placement has been added.
- Attribute num has been renamed marker and has become optional, given that sometimes one does not have any marker whatsoever for the note.
- Furthermore, note references have added a mechanism to specify exactly the placement of the note with re
  gards to other elements of the document: an optional placementBase attribute has been added, which contains a local href (i.e. a #id reference) to the element near which the note should be placed.
To summarize:
- To place a note at the end of a document, placement="bottom" and placementBase="#[document ID]"
- To place a note at the end of a structure, including quotations, placement="bottom" and placementBase="#[structure ID].
- To place a note inline, in the closest position to the note reference, placement="inline" and no placementBase.
- To place a note inline in the closest position to a specific structure, placement="inline" and placementBase="#[structure ID]".
- To place a note on the side, in the position of the note reference, placement="side" and no placementBase.
- To place a note on the side, near to a specific structure, placement="side" and placementBase="#[structure ID]".
Values "left" and "right" are for those specific cases in which the specific placement on the right has a different legal meaning that a placement on the left, or when both types of placements exists in the same document (a rare occurrence indeed, but they exist).
New popup pattern

A new pattern was identified, and added both to the conceptual model of patterns, and to the vocabulary of elements in Akoma Ntoso. The pattern is called popup, and represents elements that, within the inline flow of text, create full and fully independent structures, that does not meddle nor interact with the text and inline elements that surround them. The quotedStructure element, which in past versions of the language did not belong to any pattern (being an exception), now fully belongs to the new popup pattern. A new element inlineNote has been added belonging to the same pattern, for notes whose content is placed alongside the text to which it refer. inlineNote elements cannot be used to editorial content, but only for authoritative content that, for some reason, is placed in a note. Finally, the generic popup element has been added for any local extension to the language that needs to use popups.
Parallel speech

Support for parallel speech elements was added. This happens through new values for the attribute status (that now include “translated”, “edited”, “verbatim”, “ignore” (for incomplete structures in authoritative documents such as amendments) and a new attribute “alternativeTo” that has been added to all content elements to specify separate and parallel copies of the same structure, that are present in the same document for a number of reasons:
1. multi-lingual documents that contain the same structures in different languages.
2. multi-version documents that contain the same structures in different versions.
3. multiple transcriptions, that contain the same speech in different transcriptions.
For instance:

<speech id="sp1" by="#fv" status="verbatim">

<from>Fabio Vitali</from>

Questo è il mio discorso in Italiano

</speech>

<speech id="sp1-alt1" by="#fv" status="translated" alternativeTo="#sp1">

<from>Fabio Vitali</from>

This is my speech in Italian

</speech>
Votes and quorum
- Two new inline elements are added to identify parts of the debate document, vote and outcome. These are meant to mark in the document the fragments of the text that describe a vote or the outcome of a vote.
- Element parliamentary allows analysis on votes and quorum verifications that are present in a debate. It is possible to associate summaries of the outcome of a vote in a operable way, as follows:
<parliamentary>

<voting id="vot1" href="#smr1" refersTo="#billAppr" outcome="#approved">

<quorum id="vot1-quo1" refersTo="#majority" value="50"/>

<count id="vot1-cnt1" refersTo="#yeah" href="#qt1" value="41"/>

<count id="vot1-cnt2" refersTo="#nay" href="#qt2" value="34"/>

<count id="vot1-cnt3" refersTo="#nulls" href="#span147" value="23"/>

</voting>

</parliamentary>

...

<summary id="smr1"> Bill put to approval: <quantity refersTo="#votes" id="qt1">34</quantity>negative votes and<quantity refersTo="#votes" id="qt2">41</quantity>positive votes and <quantity refersTo="#votes" id="qt3">23</quantity> null votes, final result agreed.</summary
Renumbering
- a new core attribute, evolvingId, has been added to all elements to specify an identifier that can change from expression to expression after modifications, renumbering or coexistence of similarly named structures. A full explanation of it is put in the new section 7.4 of this document
Changes in metadata section
- A new metadata section, presentation, has been added for the drafting of important presentation specifications (e.g. for tables and typographical rules mandated by law) using any language (including CSS styles).
- Element analysis has an additional parliamentary block for parliamentary analysis and an optional and repeatable element otherAnalysis block for all other kinds of analysis.
- Former Top Level Class Place is now called Location. Similarly the TLC element TLCPlace is now known as TLCLocation.
- In order to make room for an event element in the list of semantic inline elements, former element event within the lifecycle element is now called eventRef.
- Element publication in the metadata is now optional (to allow for unpublished documents such as individual amendments).
- Elements event and step, in lifecycle and workflow respectively, can now contain any non-AkomaNtoso elements inside. Attribute originatingExpression (yes/no) can now be used in events to specify that the event being referred to is the one from which this specific Expression originated.
- A new attribute pos has been added in all argument elements so that they can now make a more precise reference to the elements to which they are attached.Changes in introductory elements
Changes in introductory elements
- New preface-level elements: Some new elements have been added to use in prefaces: docCommittee, docIntroducer, docStage, docStatus, docJurisdiction, which are meant to be wrapped around the Committee, the introducer, the displayed stage, the displayed status and the displayed jurisdiction of the document being marked up. Again it is worth remembering that preface-level elements are to be used whenever in the official copy of the document these information bits are actually present, and not as a way to specify the information that is for any reason missing in the final copy of the text. Missing information is best specified in the appropriate structures of the metadata.
- The content model of elements preface and preamble have been enhanced. Besides allowing blocks, preface and preamble now allow subdivisions called recitals and citations for preamble, and longTitle for preface. Element subdivision is a generic element for a preface/preamble substructure, while the element formerly known as subdivision (in debates) is now called debateSection.
- A new coverpage element has been added to specify content that is relevant to the document and that is present in the cover page.
New inline elements
- A new inline element has been added, quantity, to contain quantitative fragments (e.g., numbers, amounts, etc.) that are relevant to the analysis of the text, Attribute normalized allows to markup the numerical content of the element if it is not directly perceivable in its original form (i.e. it is written in letters, etc.).
- A new inline element, placeholder, has been added to specify formulaic text structures that can be modified at will during the lifecycle of the document even not-authorially (e.g., a sentence such as ’30 days after the publication of this directive’ converted in an actual date once the publication date of the directive is known). The attribute originalText is used to specify the original text of the document after the replacement has taken place.
- A complete specification of references to elements of the ontology has been added. Not only person, but now all elements of the Top Level Classes have their own element, person, organization, concept, object, event, location, process, role, term.
- Element entity is now fully a generic element and requires a name attribute.
- Two new inline elements have been added in the list of preface-specific elements: legislature and session.
- A new preface inline element has been added, affectedDoc, to specify the document which is affected by this amendment.
- A new inline element, relatedDoc, has been added for the document discussed within report documents.
- A new inline element, change, has been added for the changes contained in the face-to-face text of an amendment.
- A new HTML element, u, has been added with similar use as in HTML, namely, to specify an underline.
- Element recordedTime is now an inline element and not a marker anymore.
- The popup content model available in elements such as quotedStructure now allows also substructures of hierarchies such as heading, num, content, citation, recital, intro and wrap to appear in it. Element quotedStructure now has an additional attribute for that allows to associate individual quotedStructures to individual mod elements within a mmod element.
New hierarchical element
- The fundamental structure of hierarchical elements has been modified introducing the intro and wrap elements, respectively before and after the content of the hierarchical elements, to specify introductory and concluding blocks to the lower levels of the containment hierarchy. This modification affects the list element, too.
- A new hierarchical element called transitional has been added. This is meant to contain (often unnumbered or differently numbered) hierarchical items that, being of a transitional nature, are placed in a separate section called “transitional clauses” or some such name.
- Three new hierarchical elements have been added, alinea, point and indent.
New speech elements
- Two new elements have been added in the description of a debate: narrative and summary. The narrative element is meant to contain all the narrative elements (that are not part of the scene description) that discuss things in the third person, rather than as report of a direct utterance from a participant. The summary element is meant to contain all the summarized description of speeches that are not transcribed verbatim because of their scarce relevance, formulaic nature, or other reasons. E.g.: “Question put and agreed to”.
- Several new debate sections have been added to the list. They include: rollCall, prayers, adjournement, oralStatements, writtenStatements, personalStatements, ministerialStatements, resolutions, and nationalInterest.
- Element from was made optional.
- Element debate (that was the body of the debateRecord element) is now debateContent.
Various other changes
- A number of bug fixes in content models of many elements, In particular, preface and conclusion are now optional everywhere, conclusion has become a fully hierarchical element just like preface and preamble,
- Element intro does not belong to the content model of element component anymore.
- Element table has now an additional optional caption element as in HTML. Also, the id of HTML elements tr, th and td is now optional to reduce the tear in specifying ids for long lists of cells in tables.
- Content model of element td: So far, the content model of table cells followed the inline content model (i.e., the table cell was comparable to a single paragraph). This was felt inadequate because of the lack of support of multi-paragraph table cells, as well as cells that contain whole structures, such as articles, sections, etc. The element td has thus changed the relevant pattern, being upgraded from block to container. Now any container, or block can be contained in td elements, but not next nor inline elements.
- New content model of list: the list element now allow for the specification of a listIntroduction element, a block element appearing before the first item, and of listConclusion, a block element appearing after the last item of the list (in Italian legal system, they correspond to alinea and conclusion, which are frequent occurrences in legal texts).

This release incorporates several major changes to the schema. As described above these changes include additions, modifications and deletions. As such the number of changes is too great to produce a meaningful diff (comparison) document to show the cdifferences between this release and the previous one. To see the new release click here.

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Diff:Dec 2009 & Jul 2011

General changes

Multi-linguism

New document collection document types

New Amendment document type

Time intervals

Footnotes and out-of-lines

New popup pattern

Parallel speech

Votes and quorum

Renumbering

Changes in metadata section

Changes in introductory elements

New inline elements

New hierarchical element

New speech elements

Various other changes

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