Diff:Nov 2008 & Mar 2009 — Site
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Diff:Nov 2008 & Mar 2009

This is a major release, providing a number of relevant modifications to the previous releases. Many of these modifications are NOT backward-compatible. These will be explicitly noted as such in the following.

9.1.1 Sidenotes and out of line texts


A completely new take on side notes has been undertaken in this release. Rather than being header blocks at the beginning of hierarchical structures, side notes are now full members of a new category: authorial notes. An authorial note is by definition a note (i.e., an out-of-line text fragment) that was provided by the original author of the content (i.e., by the author of the specific FRBR expression). 

Thus the element sideNote has been removed, and substituted by a new container element, outOfLine, contained in a collection element outOfLines. Each outOfLine has a type attribute assuming either of the value sideNote or publicationNote, an href attribute pointing to a structure in the document to which the out of line text should be attached to, and contains blocks such as p elements.

Thus the fragment

 

<akomaNtoso xmlns="http://www.akomantoso.org/1.0">
    <act>
        ...
        <body>
            <section id="sect54.a">
                <num>54A</num>
                <heading>Conduct of prosecutions.</heading>
                <clause id="sect54.a-cla1">
                    <num>(1)</num>
                    <sideNote>Cap 75.</sideNote>
                    <content>
                        <p> Blah blah</p>
                    </content>
                </clause>
            </section>
        </body>
     </act>
</akomaNtoso>

needs to become:

<akomaNtoso xmlns="http://www.akomantoso.org/1.0">
    <act>
        ...
        <body>
            <section id="sect54.a">
                <num>54A</num>
                <heading>Conduct of prosecutions.</heading>
                <clause id="sect54.a-cla1">
                    <num>(1)</num>
                    <content>
                        <p> Blah blah</p>
                    </content>
                </clause>
            </section>
        </body>
        <outOfLines>
            <outOfLine id="out01" type="sideNote" href="#sect54.a-cla1">
                <p>Cap 75.</p>
            </outOfLine>
        </outOfLines>
    </act>
</akomaNtoso>

 

Please note three issues:

  • Reference direction is reversed than with footnotes: rather than the inline content referring to the note, it is the side note referring to the structural fragment it appears with. This allows to get rid of reference markers within the text, and makes more sense in an abstract sense.
  • Only referable structures can have a side note. This means that side notes are to be considered associated to sections, clauses, etc. and not to the text they contain. If a fragment of text needs to have a side note, it must be wrapped in a referable fragment, such as a ref or a span element.
  • While the previous sideNote element was a block, and thus could contain directly text, the outOfLine element is a container, and thus must contain one or more blocks that in turn contain text.

 

This modification is NOT backward-compatible. Elements have been removed and a whole new section created in all types of documents.


9.1.2 Content model reorganization for speeches


After being shown an Australian judgement that was really a dialogue between the judge and the lawyers, and considering that AKOMA NTOSO already has all the necessary elements to deal with dialogues, only they were not available in judgements, it was decided that all speech elements should now be available everywhere a container is available. Thus elements such as speech, question and answer are now available even in judgements.

This modification IS backward-compatible. Content models have been expanded.

 

9.1.3 New inline elements


A number of new inline elements have been added to this release:

  • Element lawyer is used to mark the specification of a lawyer. Attribute represents can be used to refer to the party it represents and the attribute role can be added to provide more detailed information about the kind of lawyer.
  • Element opinion is used to specify the opinion of the individual judge within the coram of a judgement. Use attribute refersTo to point to a TLCConcept that provides computable assessment of the type of opinion held by the judge.
  • Element signature is used to specify the presence of a signature in the document. Use attribute refersTo to point to a TLCPerson that provides the identification of the person responsible of the signature.
  • Element entity is used to wrap any mention to a concept that is worth being mentioned in the references section. This includes persons, organizations, roles, and places, among others. Always use attribute refersTo to point to a Top Level Class element in the references section that provides computable assessment of the concept associated to that element.
  • Element date is used to wrap explicit dates in the document (that are not documentDates). Use attribute date to provide an unambiguous form of the date in XSD 1.0 syntax yyyy-mm-dd. Use attribute refersTo, if appropriate, to point to a TLCEvent that provides computable assessment of the event associated to that date. Please note that a date element was already present in the schema in the identification section of the metadata, and that it has now been renamed FRBRdate (see section 9.1.5).

 

This modification IS backward-compatible. Elements have been added.


9.1.4 Judgement-specific and act-specific elements reunited


Elements judgementType, judgementTitle and judgementNumber were considered overlapping and redundant with respect to documentType, documentTitle and documentNumber, and thus removed. Judgements should now use these documents. Furthermore, a new section in the Release Notes has been added providing hints at how to use these elements, section 7.2, that specifies that these elements may be present multiple times in the document, but if there are more than one per type, then the attribute refersTo must be present and point to different instances of TLCConcepts.

This modification is NOT backward-compatible. Elements have been removed.


9.1.5 Name changes in metadata elements


Elements within FRBRWorkFRBRExpression , FRBRManifestation, and FRBRItem have now an added FRBR prefix, and thus were turned from this, uri, alias, date, and author to FRBRthis FRBRuri, FRBRalias, FRBRdate, and FRBRauthor.

A new element date was added, and its name clashed with the elements within the FRBR levels. Given the philosophy of giving short names to elements within the content, and longer names to elements within the metadata, it was decided to change the name of the FRBR elements, and of all it neighbors, by introducing the same FRBR prefix for all.

This modification is NOT backward-compatible. Element names have been changed.


9.1.6 Bug fixes

  • A few elements now required presence of two main attributes: id and refersTo. These are *ref and *mod elements, plus elements party, judge and the new element lawyer. Previously both id and refersTo were optional. This modification is NOT backward-compatible. Attributes have been made required.
  • Element scene was previously present as both a container and a block. This is an error, and has been fixed. Element scene is now only a container available everywhere a container can be specified. This modification is NOT backward-compatible, but minor.

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