The <metadata> section of the prolog contains
information about a topic such as audience and product information. Metadata
can be used by computational processes to select particular topics or to prepare
search indexes or to customize navigation.
The <author> metadata element contains the
name of the topic's author. The currently unsupported keyref attribute can
point to another location where the author information is defined.
The <source> element contains a reference
to a resource from which the present topic is derived, either completely or
in part. The element can contain a description of the resource; the href reference
can be a string or a URL that points to it.
The <publisher> metadata element contains
the name of the person, company, or organization responsible for making the
content or subject of the topic available.
The <copyright> element is used for a single
copyright entry. It includes the copyright years and the copyright holder.
Multiple <copyright> statements are allowed.
The <copyryear> element contains the copyright
year as specified by the year attribute.
The copyright holder (<copyrholder>) element
names the entity that holds legal rights to the material contained in the
topic.
The <critdates> element contains the critical
dates in a document life cycle, such as the creation date and multiple revision
dates.
The <revised> element in the prolog is used
to maintain tracking dates that are important in a topic development cycle,
such as the last modification date, the original availability date, and the
expiration date.
The <created> element specifies the document
creation date using the date attribute.
The <resourceid> element provides an identifier
for applications that require them in a particular format, when the normal
id attribute of the topic can't be used. Each resourceid entry should be unique.
It is one of the metadata elements that can be included within the prolog
of a topic, along with document tracking and product information, etc. The
element has no content, but takes an id attribute
or an appname attribute.
The <audience> metadata element indicates,
through the value of its type attribute, the intended audience for a topic.
Since a topic can have multiple audiences, you can include multiple audience
elements. For each audience you specify, you can identify the high-level task
(job) they are trying to accomplish and the level
of experience (experiencelevel) expected.
The <category> element can represent any
category by which a topic might be classified for retrieval or navigation;
for example, the categories could be used to group topics in a generated navigation
bar. Topics can belong to multiple categories.
The <keywords> element contains a list of
keyword entries (using indexterm or
keyword markup) that can be used by a search
engine.
The <othermeta> element can be used to identify
properties not otherwise included in <metadata> and
assign name/content values to those properties. The name attribute identifies
the property and the content attribute specifies the property's value. The
values in this attribute are output as HTML metadata elements, and have no
defined meaning for other possible outputs such as PDF.
The <permissions> empty prolog element can
indicate any preferred controls for access to a topic. Topics can be filtered
based on the permissions element. This capability depends on your output formatting
process.
The <prodinfo> metadata element in the prolog
contains information about the product or products that are the subject matter
of the current topic.
The <brand> element indicates the manufacturer
or brand associated with the product described by the parent <prodinfo
element.
The <series> metadata element contains information
about the product series that the topic supports.
The <platform> metadata element contains
a description of the operating system and/or hardware related to the product
being described by the <prodinfo> element.
The <prognum> metadata element identifies
the program number of the associated program product. This is typically an
order number or a product tracking code that could be replaced by an order
number when a product completes development.
The <featnum> element contains the feature
number of a product in the document metadata.
The <component> element describes the component
of the product that this topic is concerned with. For example, a product might
be made up of many components, each of which is installable separately. Components
might also be shared by several products so that the same component is available
for installation with many products. This identification can be used to check
cross-component dependencies when some components are installed, but not others.
It could also be used to make sure that topics are hidden, removed, or flagged
in some way when the component they describe isn't installed. Such process-control
logic is not currently supported in DITA processing.
The <prodname> metadata element contains
the name of the product that is supported by the information in this topic.
The <vrmlist> element contains a set of <vrm>
elements for logging the version, release, and modification information for
multiple products or versions of products to which the topic applies.
The empty <vrm> element contains information about a single product's
version, modification, and release, to which the current topic applies.