Metadata attributes

The metadata attributes express qualifications on the content. These qualifications can be used to modify the processing of the content.

One typical use of the metadata attributes is to filter content based on their values. Another typical use is to flag content based on their values, for example by highlighting the affected text on output. Typically audience, platform, product, and otherprops are used for filtering, and the same attributes plus rev are used for flagging. Status and importance are used for tool-specific or transform-specific behavior, for example marking steps in a task as optional or required.

Conditional processing attributes

In general, a conditional processing attribute provides a list of one or more values separated with whitespace. For instance, audience="administrator programmer" qualifies the content as applying to administrators and programmers.

There are several attributes intended for conditional processing, available on most elements:

product: the product that is the subject of the discussion.
platform: the platform on which the product is deployed.
audience: the intended audience of the text
rev: the revision or draft number of the current document (typically used for flagging only, not for filtering)
otherprops: other properties that do not require semantic identification
props: a generic conditional processing attribute that can be specialized to create new semantic conditional processing attributes

Parent topic: Common attributes

Previous topic: Identifier and content referencing attributes

Next topic: Miscellaneous Attributes

Related concepts

Conditional processing attributes

Other metadata attributes

Other attributes are still considered part of an element's metadata but are not designed for conditional processing, such as filtering or flagging.

importance: The degree of priority of the content. This attribute takes a single value from an enumeration.
status: The current state of the content. This attribute takes a single value from an enumeration.

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