Creating Glossaries, Lists of Technical Terms and Indices in ESP Pages

Glossaries are mostly used for lists of People, Gods and Places which recur throughout an ESP site and/or an Oracc text corpus. There is also a similar set-up for lists of Technical Terms and for a site-wide Index.

Glossary | Adding definitions | Referring to a glossary entry | Cross referencing | List of technical terms | Index functionality | Creating entries for the index

Glossary

ESP contains glossary functionality, allowing you to create a list of defined terms and link each use of the term back to this list. It is mostly used to make lists of People, Gods and Places.

Adding glossary functionality is carried out in two steps:

  1. making a new glossary term and definition pair using the <esp:definition> element
  2. a reference to the glossary entry where that word occurs in your text, using the <esp:glossary> element.

Adding definitions

The glossary is generated from the file called glossarypage.xml, which contains the one occurrence of the element <esp:glossary-list>.

All glossary term and definition pairs should be created inside <esp:glossary-list> using the <esp:definition> element.

The specification of <esp:definition> is given below:

<esp:definition term="example">
Definition of your glossary term
>/esp:definition>
term
Mandatory. The term to be defined, which appears in the glossary list. It is matched with the term attributes (or content) of <esp:glossary> elements.

The <esp:definition> can contain other elements (including <esp:techterms> and <esp:glossary>, such that glossary entries can reference techterms entries or other glossary entries). See the section on cross-referencing the glossary and technical terms lists.

Referring to a glossary entry

To create a reference in the text to a glossary entry, use the <esp:glossary> element, as outlined below:

<esp:glossary
	term="example"
>
	Inline content
</esp:glossary>
term
Optional. The term attribute specifies the glossary term to link to. It is used when the text on the page is not identical to the term in the glossary. For example: <esp:glossary term="astrolabe">Astrolabe</esp:glossary> if your term in the text is capitalized, or <esp:glossary term="astrolabe">astrolabes</esp:glossary> if your term in the text is in plural.

If no term attribute is given, the content of the element is used as the term.

Cross referencing

A glossary definition can cross-reference other glossary entries or entries in the technical terms list (see below for more on the technical terms list). Thus, the element <esp:definition> can contain the elements <esp:glossary> and <esp:techterms>, which reference glossary and techterms entries respectively.

List of technical terms

The technical terms functionality operates in the same way as the glossary to provide a reference list of technical terms. It was added to ESP's forerunner electrostatic by Ruth Horry in 2007 for the Knowledge & Power [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp] website.

Adding technical terms (henceforth called 'techterms') functionality involves two steps:

  1. the creation of a new technical term and definition pair using the <esp:termsdefinition> element;
  2. a reference to the glossary entry where that word occurs in your text, using the <esp:techterms> element.

Adding definitions

The technical terms list is generated from the file called techterms.xml, which contains the one occurrence of the element <esp:techterms-list>.

All techterms term and definition pairs should be created inside <esp:techterms-list> using the <esp:termsdefinition> element.

The specification of <esp:termsdefinition> is given below:

<esp:termsdefinition term="example">
Definition of your techterms term
</esp:termsdefinition>
term
Mandatory. The term to be defined, which appears in the techterms list. It is matched with the term attributes (or content) of <esp:techterms> elements.

The <esp:termsdefinition> element can contain other elements (including <esp:glossary> and <esp:techterms>), such that techterms entries can reference glossary entries or other techterms entries. See the section on cross-referencing the glossary and technical terms lists.

Referring to a techterms entry

To create a reference in the text to a techterms entry, use the <esp:techterms> element, as outlined below:

<esp:techterms
	term="example"
>
	Arbitrary inline content
</esp:techterms>
term
Optional. The term attribute specifies the techterms term to link to. It is used when the text on the page is not identical to the term in the glossary. For example: <esp:techterms term="astrolabe">Astrolabe</esp:techterms> if your term in the text is capitalized, or <esp:techterms term="astrolabe">astrolabes</esp:glossary> if your term in the text is in plural.

If no term attribute is given, the content of the element is used as the term.

Index functionality

ESP can create an index of terms used on the site and allows cross referencing between them. Indexing is done using the <esp:index> element.

When you index a term that occurs on two different pages, a cross reference (XR) graphic is inserted next to the term. Clicking on the XR graphic takes you to the index page, listing all of the pages where this term occurs.

The indexpage.xml file

The file indexpage.xml contains the single instance of the element <esp:index-list/>, from which the index is generated. This element is empty. No index terms should be placed on this page. The index is automatically generated from the instances of <esp:index> within the text.

The indexpage.xml file should contain the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<esp:page
	xmlns:esp="http://oracc.org/ns/esp/1.0"
	xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>
	<esp:name>Index</esp:name>

	<esp:title>Site index</esp:title>  (any arbitrary name)

	<html><head></head><body>
		<esp:index-list/>
	</body></html>

</esp:page>

Creating entries for the index

Entries in the index are created using the <esp:index> element. If there is more than one entry for the index term, a cross reference to that term is created in the index.

<esp:index
	term="example"
>
	Arbitrary inline content
</esp:index>
term
Optional. The term that is being indexed. Used when the term on the page is not identical to the term in the index—for example, if it is capitalized (<esp:glossary term="astrolabe">Astrolabe</esp:glossary>) or in the plural (<esp:glossary term="astrolabe">astrolabes</esp:glossary>).

If no term attribute is given, the content of the element is used as the term.

 
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