glossary.collection
Prev | Glossary | Next

## glossary.collection

glossary.collection — Name of the glossary collection file

## Synopsis

    <xsl:param name="glossary.collection"></xsl:param>

## Description

Glossaries maintained independently across a set of documents are likely to become inconsistent unless considerable effort is expended to keep them in sync. It makes much more sense, usually, to store all of the glossary entries in a single place and simply “extract” the ones you need in each document.

That's the purpose of the `glossary.collection` parameter. To setup a global glossary “database”, follow these steps:

### Setting Up the Glossary Database

First, create a stand-alone glossary document that contains all of the entries that you wish to reference. Make sure that each glossary entry has an ID.

Here's an example glossary:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <!DOCTYPE glossary
      PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
      "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd">
    <glossary>
    <glossaryinfo>
    <editor><firstname>Eric</firstname><surname>Raymond</surname></editor>
    <title>Jargon File 4.2.3 (abridged)</title>
    <releaseinfo>Just some test data</releaseinfo>
    </glossaryinfo>

    <glossdiv><title>0</title>

    <glossentry>
    <glossterm>0</glossterm>
    <glossdef>
    <para>Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter `O' (the 15th letter of
    the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot
    alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have
    compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O
    is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more
    like an American football stood on end (or the reverse), you're
    probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted zero
    seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If
    your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you're probably looking at
    an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on
    the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom /O is a letter,
    curse this arrangement). (Interestingly, the slashed zero long
    predates computers; Florian Cajori's monumental "A History of
    Mathematical Notations" notes that it was used in the twelfth and
    thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero
    does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM
    and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse <emphasis>this</emphasis>
    arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide).
    Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a <emphasis>reversed</emphasis>
    slash. Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken oval and 0
    as an oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet another
    convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but
    added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted
    Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was endorsed by a draft ANSI
    standard for how to draw ASCII characters, but the final standard
    changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in the upper-left corner).
    Are we sufficiently confused yet?</para>
    </glossdef>
    </glossentry>

    <glossentry>
    <glossterm>1TBS</glossterm>
    <glossdef>
    <para role="accidence">
    <phrase role="pronounce"></phrase>
    <phrase role="partsofspeach">n</phrase>
    </para>
    <para>The "One True Brace Style"</para>
    <glossseealso>indent style</glossseealso>
    </glossdef>
    </glossentry>

    <!-- ... -->

    </glossdiv>

    <!-- ... -->

    </glossary>

### Marking Up Glossary Terms

That takes care of the glossary database, now you have to get the entries into your document. Unlike bibliography entries, which can be empty, creating “placeholder” glossary entries would be very tedious. So instead, support for `glossary.collection` relies on implicit linking.

In your source document, simply use `firstterm` and `glossterm` to identify the terms you wish to have included in the glossary. The stylesheets assume that you will either set the `baseform` attribute correctly, or that the content of the element exactly matches a term in your glossary.

If you're using a `glossary.collection`, don't make explicit links on the terms in your document.

So, in your document, you might write things like this:

    <para>This is dummy text, without any real meaning.
    The point is simply to reference glossary terms like <glossterm>0</glossterm>
    and the <firstterm baseform="1TBS">One True Brace Style (1TBS)</firstterm>.
    The <glossterm>1TBS</glossterm>, as you can probably imagine, is a nearly
    religious issue.</para>

If you set the `firstterm.only.link` parameter, only the terms marked with `firstterm` will be links. Otherwise, all the terms will be linked.

### Marking Up the Glossary

The glossary itself has to be identified for the stylesheets. For lack of a better choice, the `role` is used. To identify the glossary as the target for automatic processing, set the role to “`auto`”. The title of this glossary (and any other information from the `glossaryinfo` that's rendered by your stylesheet) will be displayed, but the entries will come from the database.

Unfortunately, the glossary can't be empty, so you must put in at least one `glossentry`. The content of this entry is irrelevant, it will not be rendered:

    <glossary role="auto">
    <glossentry>
    <glossterm>Irrelevant</glossterm>
    <glossdef>
    <para>If you can see this, the document was processed incorrectly. Use
    the <parameter>glossary.collection</parameter> parameter.</para>
    </glossdef>
    </glossentry>
    </glossary>

What about glossary divisions? If your glossary database has glossary divisions and your automatic glossary contains at least one `glossdiv`, the automic glossary will have divisions. If the `glossdiv` is missing from either location, no divisions will be rendered.

Glossary entries (and divisions, if appropriate) in the glossary will occur in precisely the order they occur in your database.

### Formatting the Document

Finally, when you are ready to format your document, simply set the `glossary.collection` parameter (in either a customization layer or directly through your processor's interface) to point to your global glossary.

A relative path in the parameter is interpreted in one of two ways:

1. If the parameter `glossterm.auto.link` is set to zero, then the path is relative to the file containing the empty `glossary` element in the document.

2. If the parameter `glossterm.auto.link` is set to non-zero, then the path is relative to the file containing the first inline `glossterm` or `firstterm` in the document to be linked.

Once the collection file is opened by the first instance described above, it stays open for the current document and the relative path is not reinterpreted again.

The stylesheets will format the glossary in your document as if all of the entries implicilty referenced appeared there literally.

### Limitations

Glossary cross-references within the glossary are not supported. For example, this will not work:

    <glossentry>
    <glossterm>gloss-1</glossterm>
    <glossdef><para>A description that references <glossterm>gloss-2</glossterm>.</para>
    <glossseealso>gloss-2</glossseealso>
    </glossdef>
    </glossentry>

If you put glossary cross-references in your glossary that way, you'll get the cryptic error: `Warning: glossary.collection specified, but there are 0 automatic glossaries`.

Instead, you must do two things:

1. Markup your glossary using `glossseealso`:

       <glossentry>
       <glossterm>gloss-1</glossterm>
       <glossdef><para>A description that references <glossterm>gloss-2</glossterm>.</para>
       <glossseealso>gloss-2</glossseealso>
       </glossdef>
       </glossentry>

2. Make sure there is at least one `glossterm` reference to gloss-2 in your document. The easiest way to do that is probably within a `remark` in your automatic glossary:

       <glossary role="auto">
       <remark>Make sure there's a reference to <glossterm>gloss-2</glossterm>.</remark>
       <glossentry>
       <glossterm>Irrelevant</glossterm>
       <glossdef>
       <para>If you can see this, the document was processed incorrectly. Use
       the <parameter>glossary.collection</parameter> parameter.</para>
       </glossdef>
       </glossentry>
       </glossary>

Prev | Up | Next
firstterm.only.link | Home | glossary.as.blocks