Element

The term "element" is used widely (and arbitrarily) in content management. Several uses of the term are described below.

Element describes the structural parts of HTML and XML documents, e.g.:

  • The <head> and <body> elements in HTML and most other HTML tags. Unfortunately, some HTML tags contain only style information - e.g., <b>.
  • In XML an element is a start tag and end tag plus anything inside the tags.
  • In DITA every term in the Language Architecture describes an element or tag name.

An element, sometimes referred to as a Content Element, is an unique, discreet chunk of content, one that deserves its own presentation section (a Content Block) in a Content Template.

Elements are information containers that may contain other elements. Documents are comprised of a combination of container elements. For example, a book is comprised of chapter elements, that contain section elements, that in turn contain sub-section elements, page elements, etc. A date element might contain the following elements: day, month, year.

The job of the Content Manager or Information Architect is to identify types of elements, so they can be grouped into classes with common properties, and a range of attributes or values.

DITA identifies the three most common information types at the Topic level, Concept, Task, and Reference, and then hundreds of element types that are contained in topics.



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This page has been accessed 238 times. This page was last modified 15:23, 8 August 2007.





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