Opened 13 years ago

Last modified 13 years ago

#778 new defect

Connecting DC metadata element names with labels between GLI and GEMS

Reported by: ak19 Owned by: nobody
Priority: moderate Milestone: Possible 2.88 Release
Component: GEMS Severity: minor
Keywords: GLI, GEMS Cc:

Description

when you write with a prefix like dc.Identifier you expect that the metadata element is that, but then when you go to GLI and look at the data elements you see dc.Resource Identifier. For consistency I think you should put either just "full name" [without prefix] or "prefix.label" in the left hand pane of GEMS for all of the metadata elements of a set, no?

  1. The reason that GEMS lists "dc.Subject" and "dc.Identifier" to the left is because this is exactly the name of the metadata that you need to type into a format statement for Greenstone to display it.

So you would write a format statement like the following in GLI: <td>[dc.Subject]</td> (and not [dc.Subject and Keywords] or [Subject]).

When you click on a dc metadata name to the left in GEMS, you will see its official DC element name (e.g. "Subject" or "Identifier") listed at the top of the upper pane to the right and its label (e.g. "Resource Identifier") listed in various languages for which this is defined in the lower pane.

  1. Since you're concerned that users may not make the connection between dc.Resource Identifier (and its variants in different languages) in GLI and the matching dc.Identifier in GEMS, Dr Bainbridge came up with the idea of a tooltip when clicking on an element to the left of GEMS, which will also be incorporated into the existing tooltip you see when you hover over a dc metadata label in GLI.

(In GLI, the message will be: "Dublin core element name <e.g. Subject>. To use this in a format statement, you'd write [dc.Subject]." Followed by the existing tooltip message.)

There is a drawback to this though: except for predefined metadata sets (the ones you *load* into GEMS), other metadata sets are created in GEMS, which is another purpose GEMS is used for. In the latter usage, there will not yet be any metadata element name and label, as the user has yet to design the metadata set and needs to still type it into the fields. So undefined element names and labels cannot be loaded into tooltips for metadata items on the left side of GEMS.

I can indeed now see that the "label" for some Dublin Core fields on the official site is different from and more complex than the "full name". This is really confusing, but I guess it means that it would be better to call the field dc.Resource Identifier in GEMS (or simply Identifier, the "full name") rather than dc.Identifier.

I just had a look at GEMS. It says dc.Identifier (which is the programmatic name) and if you then click on it, its label field says "Resource Identifier". This is no different from how dc.Subject has a label field called "Subject and Keywords".

See also http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/elements.shtml#identifier again, which defines the Dublin Core metadata element as "Subject" but its label as "Subject and Keywords", while the label for element "Identifier" is "Resource Identifier".

Since GEMS consistently uses the metadata set name as prefix for all other elements, including for Subject, it behaves similarly for Identifier. Thus we have dc.Subject and dc.Identifier. I think it will be confusing to change dc.Identifier to plain "Identifier" while all the others remain prefixed with dc.*. Plain "Identifier" is moreover not the element's qualified name (qualified by metadata-set name) within Greenstone.

Change History (1)

comment:1 by sjm84, 13 years ago

Milestone: 2.85 Release2.86 Release
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