8 Utility Modules

The following modules are used to highlight the information being documented in each of the above modules where prose may be needed to convey the critical metadata. The eml-text module provides a number of text-based constructs to enhance a document (including sections, paragraphs, lists, subscript, superscript, emphasis, etc.)

8.1 The eml-text module - Text field formatting

The eml-text module is a wrapper container that allows general text descriptions to be used within the various modules of eml. It can include either structured or unstructured text blocks. It isn't really appropriate to use this module outside of the context of a parent module, because the parent module determines the appropriate context to which this text description applies. The eml-text module allows one to provide structure to a text description in order to convey concepts such as sections (paragraphs), hierarchy (ordered and unordered lists), emphasis (bold, superscript, subscript) etc. The structured elements can be specified using a subset of DocBook so the predefined DocBook stylesheets can be used to style EML fields that implement this module, or alternatively can be specified using Markdown text blocks. Combinations of plain text, docbook sections, and markdown sections can be interleaved in any order, but most people will likely find the markdown syntax the easiest to use.

8.2 The eml-semantics module - Semantic annotations for formalized statements about EML components

The eml-semantics module defines types and elements for annotating other structures within EML with semantically-precise statements from various controlled vocabularies. This is accomplished by associating the global URI for a property and value with elements from EML, such as an attribute, an entity, or a dataset. It is used throughout the other EML modules where detailed semantic information is needed. For example, given an EML attribute named “tmpair”, one might want to indicate semantically that the attribute is measuring the property “Temperature” from a sample of the entity “Air”, where both of those terms are defined precisely in controlled vocabularies. The eml-semantics module defines an ‘annotation’ element and associated type that can be used within EML resources (dataset, software, etc.), EML Entities (dataTable, spatialRaster, spatialVector, otherEntity), and EML Attributes. They can also be applied within the EML additionalMetadata field to label arbitrary structures within EML, in which case the subject of the annotation is the element listed in the describes element within the additionalMetadata field.