OLAC Metadata Standard: Call for review

[Steven Bird]

On Tue, 2003-10-14 at 10:04, Nicholas Thieberger wrote:
>
> Having gone through a long process of implementation of the OLAC
> metadata set I appreciate the work that has gone into developing it.
>
> I also appreciate that it is possible to include additional metadata
> under the appropriate <dc:...> element and so this metadata standard
> is not as restrictive  as it first appeared (to me anyway).
>
> One issue in the current version: Is the following true? From the
> PARADISEC experience it seems that every element needs to have a
> namespace declared:
> >By convention the namespace prefix olac is used, and the DC
> >namespace is declared to  be the default so that the metadata
> >element tags need not be prefixed.
>
> Thanks for the opportunity to comment
>
> Nick

In the process of getting the PARADISEC repository working, we
discovered that the static repository gateway did not support XML files
that use Apple Macintosh end-of-line characters (that bug is now fixed).
Before we discovered that this was the problem, we tried modifying the
repository file to give dc as an explicit namespace.

I've now re-checked, and can confirm that OLAC records in static
repository files can declare dc as the default namespace.  However, I
don't think the standard should specify this kind of implementation
detail.

In the process of experimenting with the static repository gateway, I
discovered another bug in the implementation which the Los Alamos people
have fixed.  Now it is possible to declare all namespaces on the
Repository element (the root element of the static repository file),
instead of declaring them on each record.  This removes a lot of clutter
from the files and makes manual editing much easier.

Steven Bird