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Introduction to Parameter Entities

This section describes each parameter entity used by the Article Authoring Tag Set, except those that are part of MathML, the NISO JATS XHTML-inspired table structure, or the OASIS Interchange CALS table structure. (Note: The MathML modules come from external sources; see the documentation provided by the authority responsible for the MathML Tag Set. The NISO JATS XHTML-inspired Table Module is maintained and defined as part of NISO JATS, but see also the W3C XHTML documentation. A separate Tag Library describing the OASIS Exchange CALS Table model is available at: https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/options/OASIS/tag-library/19990315/index.html)
A parameter entity is an XML syntactic construct that allows a name to be given to a collection of elements, attributes, or attribute values so that they can be referred to by name rather than have their members listed every time they are used. For example, the name %person-name.class; stands for all the element components of a person’s name, such as any title or honorific preceding the person’s name, a given (first) name, a surname, and any suffix following the name (such as “Jr.”).

Parameter Entity Pages

Although the parameter entities are declared in many different modules, they are described here in alphabetical order of their XML names (i.e., parameter entity type names). The XML name is the shorter machine-readable name used in XML vocabularies and by software; for example, the XML name %app.class; is used for the parameter entity named Just Appendix Class Elements. Parameter entity names always begin with a percent sign and end with a semi-colon.
Each parameter entity is described by a separate HTML page, where the heading for the page displays the parameter entity’s XML name followed by a more descriptive name. The rest of the parameter entity description page discusses aspects of the parameter entity and its usage. These sections within the page always appear in the following order although any given parameter entity description may not contain all the sections:
Description (untitled)
This section provides a narrative description of the parameter entity, describing what it contains, what it does, or why and when it has been used.
Usage/Remarks
For some parameter entities, this section provides additional useful information about the parameter entity or its usage.
Design Notes are instructions aimed at implementors, so they may better appreciate the rationale underlying a design decision such as the inclusion of an OR bar within a parameter entity. For example, inline-mix parameter entities always begin with an OR bar to ease customization for those organizations wishing only character data rather than a mixed content model for a particular element.
Declaration
Contains a copy of the parameter entity’s declaration in XML syntax, i.e., the “content” of the parameter entity. This may contain embedded parameters entities, of the form “%name;”.
Expanded Declaration
Contains a copy of the parameter entity’s declaration in XML syntax, i.e., the “content” of the parameter entity with all embedded parameter entities expanded to their ultimate values.
Parameter Entity Naming Conventions
JATS uses a series of design and naming conventions consistently. While parsing software cannot enforce these parameter entity usage or naming conventions, these conventions can make it much easier for a person to know how the content models work. The Article Authoring Tag Set (and the entire JATS DTD Suite) use the following usage and naming conventions.
  • Classes — Classes are functional OR-groups of elements. All class names end in the suffix “.class”. For example: 
    <!ENTITY % list.class   "def-list | list"             >
    Classes cannot be made empty; the class should just be removed from all models where you do not want the elements included.
  • Mixes — Mixes are OR-groups of classes. All mixes must be declared after all classes, since mixes are composed of classes. (In best practice, mixes never contain element names directly.) Mix names have no set suffix, and only a few have been named “-mix”. Some mixes are inline to be intermingled with #PCDATA in a mixed content model while other mixes are grouping of block-level elements. All inline mixes begin with an OR bar. For example: 
    <!ENTITY % rendition-plus
"| %emphasis.class;  | %subsup.class;"    >
  • Content — Content models and content model overrides use mixes and classes for all OR groups. Only sequences are made up of element names directly. Content models overrides are of two types, which are defined separately to preserve the mixed-content or element-content nature of the models as an aid to interchange.
    • -models — The override of a complete content model will be named with a suffix “-model”. The override contains the entire content model, including the enclosing parentheses, for example: 
      <!ENTITY % kwd-group-model
"(title?, (%kwd.class;)+ )"                  >
    • -elements — A group of elements to be mixed with #PCDATA inside a mixed content model will be named with a suffix “-elements”. For example, %copyright-statement-elements; would be used in the model for the element <copyright-statement>. All “-elements” overrides begin with an OR bar, so that a model may exclude all elements and be reduced to #PCDATA. For example: 
      <!ENTITY % copyright-statement-elements
"| %address-link.class; | %emphasis.class; |
%phrase-content.class; | %subsup.class;" >
      Could be replaced by
      <!ENTITY % copyright-statement-elements    " "        >
  • Attribute lists — Attribute lists for a particular element are named with the name of the element followed by the suffix “-atts”, so, for example, the attributes for the <sec> element would be named %sec-atts;. Such lists are not reused as frequently as they might be in many tag sets, to provide maximum flexibility. Attribute lists for different elements are rarely tied together (JATS common atts being an exception). The parameter entities contain at least one complete line of an attribute list, excluding the ATTLIST Declaration. 
    <!ENTITY % sec-atts
"%jats-common-atts;
sec-type        CDATA         #IMPLIED
specific-use    CDATA         #IMPLIED
supplemental    (yes | no)    #IMPLIED
xml:lang        NMTOKEN       #IMPLIED
%multi-lang-atts;"                      >