termdef

termdef — An inline definition of a term.

Synopsis

termdef ::=

Attributes

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

Additional attributes:

  • baseform
  • sortas

Additional Constraints

  • A termdef must contain exactly one firstterm

Description

A termdef is an inline term definition. Some styles of documentation collect all terms together in a glossary of some sort, but another style is to place the definitions inline.

The glossary and glosslist elements support the former style, termdef the latter.

Every term should have an xml:id attribute to uniquely identify it. The content of the termdef is the definition of the term. Often it is valuable to word the definition so that it will stand alone, in case it becomes useful to extract all the terms into a separate glossary in addition to having them defined inline.

Every termdef must contain exactly one firstterm. The firstterm identifies the actual term defined by the termdef.

Processing expectations

Formatted inline.

Attributes

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

any attribute

Any attribute in any other explicit namespace

baseform

Specifies the base form of the term, the one that appears in the glossary. This allows adjectival, plural, and other variations of the term to appear in the element. The element content is the default base form.

sortas

Specifies the string by which the element's content is to be sorted; if unspecified, the content is used

Parents

These elements contain termdef: bridgehead, citation, citetitle, contrib, emphasis (db.emphasis), entry, firstterm (db.firstterm), glosssee, glossseealso, glossterm (db.glossterm), inlinestagedir, line, link, literallayout, member, meta (db.meta.content), olink, orgdiv, para, phrase (db.phrase), primary, quote (db.quote), remark, secondary, see, seealso, simpara, subtitle, term, termdef, tertiary, title, titleabbrev.

Children

The following elements occur in termdef: text, abbrev, acronym, alt, anchor, author, biblioref, citation, citebiblioid, citetitle, coref, date, editor, email, emphasis (db._emphasis), emphasis (db.emphasis), firstterm (db._firstterm), firstterm (db.firstterm), footnote, footnoteref, foreignphrase (db._foreignphrase), foreignphrase (db.foreignphrase), glossterm (db._glossterm), glossterm (db.glossterm), indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), inlineequation, inlinemediaobject, inlinestagedir, jobtitle, link, literal, olink, optional, org, orgname, person, personname, phrase (db._phrase), phrase (db.phrase), productname, productnumber, quote (db._quote), quote (db.quote), remark, revnumber, subscript, superscript, templatename, termdef, trademark, uri, wordasword, xref.

Examples

 1 |<article xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
   |	 xmlns:xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink'>
   |<title>termdef</title>
   | 
 5 |<para>
   |  This paragraph contains an inline term definition.
   |  <termdef xml:id="dt-xml-processor">A software module
   |  called an <firstterm>XML processor</firstterm> is used
   |  to read XML documents and provide access to their
10 |  content and structure.</termdef> The definition comes
   |  from <link xlink:href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml">the
   |  XML Recommendation</link>.
   |</para>
   | 
15 |</article>

This paragraph contains an inline term definition. A software module called an XML processor is used to read XML documents and provide access to their content and structure. The definition comes from the XML Recommendation.