Personal tools

Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

 
You are here: Home → Release Notes → AKOMA NTOSO 1.0 Schema → Release History
 
We are in the process of updating this content to reflect changes to the latest release of AKOMA NTOSO!!!
Document Actions
Previous: 9. Stylesheets  

10. Release History


AKOMA NTOSO 1.0 Schema

1 Schema for AKOMA NTOSO 1.0

introduces and explains the schema for AKOMA NTOSO
2 Namespaces

AKOMA NTOSO 1.0 documents are completely qualified
3 Schema overview

All AKOMA NTOSO documents share ...
4 Patterns

abstraction and distillation of past experiences ...
5 Elements

supports the idea of using semantically rich terms
6 Document URIs

all resources are identified by a unique name
7 Element Synopsis

Elements of AKOMA NTOSO
8 Attribute Synopsis

Synopsis table
9 Stylesheets

example stylesheet for generating XHTML files
10 Release History

differences between releases
differences between releases

Differences between release 22/10/2007 and 17/09/2007

This is a major release with plenty of differences and improvement. It is worth noting that at least ONE modification (the creation of the content element and the renaming of title and subtitle) is NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE, so that documents that were valid against the previous versions most probably will NOT be valid against this version. This release also includes and documents an unofficial, undocumented release called Tentative Release 20071510 dated 15 October, 2007.

  • Element clauses has been renamed into body. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • Elements title and subtitle are now called heading and subheading, to allow for the presence of the title hierarchical elements. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • The list of hierarchical elements is enriched with the addition of elements title, book, tome, subsection, subpart, subparagraph, subchapter, subtitle, and subclause. As mentioned, elements title and subtitle existed for a different purpose, and are now plain hierarchical elements.
  • A new element content is added to connect the list of hierarchical elements to their actual textual content. Any hierarchical element can contain either other hierarchical elements or the content element which contains blocks. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • The content model of article and clause has completely changed and is now identical to the other hierarchical elements. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • A new optional attribute refersTo has been added to all content elements of the Akoma Ntoso schema. The attribute refersTo can be used when necessary to refer to an element of the references section, in order to suggest an ontological interpretation of the content of the element. Also use refersTo to make an element equivalent and referring to another (e.g. for translation purposes).
  • A new value for the status attribute has been added, “editorial”. The new value is to be added for content that has to appear in the final document with the rest of the text, but was not originally included in the document created by the author. Editorial elements can be used for editorial annotations (e.g.:  <span status=”editorial”>(Translation of Afrikaans paragraph follows.)</span>)
  • An initial list of debaterecord subdivisions has been created. Debate records can now be organized with subdivisions that reflect the actual nature of the content. The new elements are: AdministrationOfOath, Communication, Petitions, Papers, NoticesOfMotion, Questions, Address, ProceduralMotions, and PointOfOrder, and can be used in all places where previously only subdivision could be used. TENTATIVE MODIFICATION. DO NOT RELY ON THIS.
  • To avoid confusion between the elements item and Item, the latter has been renamed FRBRItem. For symmetry, all four FRBR levels have similarly changed name. Therefore Work, Expression, Manifestation and Item are now called FRBRork, FRBRExpression, FRBRManifestation and FRBRItem. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • To avoid confusion between the elements force and Force, and efficacy and Efficacy, the latter ones have been renamed ForceMod and EfficacyMod. For symmetry, all other modification elements have similarly changed name. Therefore Textual, Meaning, Scope, Force, Efficacy and LegalSystem are now called TextualMod, MeaningMod, ScopeMod, ForceMod, EfficacyMod and LegalSystemMod. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • The uri element specifies the URI in a value attribute rather than in an href attribute. (Bug fix from previous error) NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • The value Suspension for the type attribute of the EfficacyMod (formerly Efficacy) element  has been replaced by two values, EntryIntoEfficacy and EndOfEfficacy.
  • All TLC are now present in the reference section. Newly added terms are: TLCConcept, TLCObject, TLCEvent, TLCPlace, TLCProcess, TLCRole, and TLCTerm.
  • Existing TLC elements have been renamed to include the prefix “TLC” to clarify their role. This include the renaming of Person, Organization, Role, and Reference into TLCPerson, TLCOrganization, TLCRole, and TLCReference. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • Element TLCReference (formerly Reference) is now a generic element in all respects, and has a new required name attribute. NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE
  • The Work element now contains components just like the other elements of the identification element, such as Expression, Manifestation and Item (Added in Tentative Release 20071510).
  • Within the identification elements, component can now nest and contain other component elements  (Added in Tentative Release 20071510).

Differences between release 17/09/2007 and 08/06/2007

This is a minor bug-fix release managing better the interaction between Akoma Ntoso elements and elements coming from different vocabularies.

The attribute processContent of the <xsd:any> element is set to lax, so that if proprietary elements are added here and there, users do not have to have the proprietary schema to validate the documents, but just the main Akoma Ntoso one.

A new href attribute is added to a few inner elements of the provisions in the active modifications part of the metadata. This is to prevent the creation of useless proprietary elements to point to the positions in the document that contain the text being referenced.

Differences between release 08/06/2007 and 31/05/2007

This is a bug-fix release for managing the expected content model of elements such as mod, mmod, and rmod, which were expected to be mixed content model with a free choice of inline elements and quotes, and due to the odd behavior of complex type derivation through extension in XML Schema 1.0, ended up being a mixed content model with an ordered sequence of a free choice of inline elements and a free choice of quotes, in this order. Similar problem could be found with li elements.

The solution has been to revoke the type of mod, mmod and rmod from being derivations of the inline type, and create a new type modType, which is disconnected from inline but has all the right elements. A similar solution has been taken for li.

Also, for greater precision, the previously defined type modType (which collected modification metadata) has been renamed modifictionType in order to prevent further confusion. 

Differences between release 31/05/2007 and 14/03/2007

None whatsoever in the schema. Release dates of schemas haven’t been changed.Only modifications are in the examples and xslt stylesheets to reflect changes in naming policies in metadata sections.

Differences between release 14/03/2007 and 01/02/2007

Small bug fix in the content model of the quotedStructure element that now allows clause elements to be present.

Differences between release 01/02/2007 and 23/11/2006

The Naming Convention is introduced and officially raised to standard level. Correspondingly, section 10 of this document has been mostly emptied and now refers to the external document “AKOMA NTOSO Naming Convention”.

The element and attribute synopsis has been completely revised and reorganized.  

The schema only received minor modifications covering only the rename of the minutes element into debaterecord, a few bug fixes in attributes, plus the support for differences in force and efficacy periods (Please note: an intermediate, non official release dated 30/11/2006 already contains some of these modifications).

  • Two new core optional attributes, startEfficacy and endEfficacy, have been added to all content elements.
  • Elements list, ul, ol, and table now have the full set of core attributes, i.e., id, class, style, title, and enactment attributes.
  • Element ActDate now has a date attribute for normalized dates.
  • A bug in the content model of mod, mmod and rmod has been fixed and now their content model allows plain text to be inserted as well as other types of content.

Differences between release 23/11/2006 and 23/10/2006

A minor release covering mostly only the attributes and elements of the metadata section.

  • Elements attachments, clauses, debate and maincontent now have the core set of attributes (they were forgotten in previous versions).
  • Analysis now distinguish between active modifications (stored in amending acts) and passive modifications (stored in amended acts). The old amendments element has been replaced with ActiveModifications and PassiveModifications.
  • Attachment and AttachmentOf have a new attribute, type. No restricted set of values is foreseen yet, but this is bound to change in future release.
  • source and destination elements of all analytical elements can now be repeated. The attribute upTo has also been added to deal with range references for analytical elements.
  • Two new attributes, exclusion and incomplete, are added for modifications that are specified with exceptions and in an incomplete manner.
  • A new textual modification has been added, Renumbering.
  • The elements oldText and newText have been renamed into old and new
  • The element condition has now a new frozen attribute.

Differences between release 23/10/2006 and 26/06/2006

Many major modifications have been brought into this release. Metadata are now completely reorganized, introducing the organization in four levels and a section on amendment analysis. Within document, new elements have been added to handle strange hierarchies, line and page numbering, and multiple and range-based modifications and references. In detail:

  • New block elements called list, titled block (tblock) and foreign are added.
  • New inline elements eol and eop for managing end-of-line and end-of-page situations when they are relevant
  • All IDREF attributes are now ANYURI (thus allowing for references to be stored outside of the document). A reference to item foobar used to be idref=”foobar”, needs now to be xhref=”#foobar”.
  • The attribute numbering has been removed because of doubts of its real usefulness. Can be reinstated if found needed.
  • Two new elements appear close to num and title at the beginning of hierarchical elements, subtitle and sidenote. It’s left to markers to decide when to use either one.
  • The content model of all metadata elements has been simplified removing the attributes for style and enactment that made little sense for them.
  • Element item has completely been reformulated. Its former role as plain member of a hierarchy of subdivision elements within maincontent has been replaced by item list, which contains any of a number of item elements. Use list instead of item, and place item within list elements.
  • Elements ref and mod have been enriched with derivative elements mref (multiple references), rref (range of references), mmod (multiple modifications) and rmod (range of modifications) to manage references and modifications that explicitly list in brief multiple different locations of destination document (e.g., “The  Provisions of sections 1(1) and (2), 24, 25, 29(2), 30, 31, 43, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 67, 80, 84, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108 and 115 of law n° 92-10 of 17 september 1992 to lay down the conditions governing the vacancy of and election to the Presidency of the Republic are amended and supplemented” and “The existing sections 34 to 54 of the Principal Act shall be amended by renumbering them as sections 33 to 53 respectively”).
  • New inline elements ins, del and omissis are included for managing explicit newly inserted text, deleted text or omitted text in presentation of norms.
  • All HTML table elements now have required id. HTML li element has now optional value.
  • The section meta has been completely rewritten and has new a completely different structure and philosophy. See section 7 for details on how to use it. The structure splits open the old descriptor section, which now is separated into identification, publication and classification, and introduces the wholly new analysis section.
  • Identification is a new structure that contains information about the URIs relative to the four levels of organization of  metadata, Work, Expression, Manifestation and Item. For each of these levels a number of metadata elements are required: author, date, URI, components (except for Work) and preservation.
  • Analysis is a container of provisions about the actual content of the norm. Currently it contains only modification provisions, that are used to classify and manage amendment acts and documents. A total of 6 types of amendments have been added, for a total of 32 subcases, and a collection of 10 parameters to describe them.

Differences between release 26/06/2006 and 16/05/2006

Only a few bug fixes:

  • The mod element has been included in the list of inline elements and now can actually be used.
  • The container elements have been added to the content model of the maincontent element and now can be used even outside of quotedStructure.
  • The li element now has a value attribute for specifying the actual display string if different from what automatically computed because of its position.

Differences between release 16/05/2006 and 25/04/2006

  • The content model of the debate now has also answers and others and comments.
  • In all elements of the debate the previously existing attribute by, to identify the speaker, is now accompanied by optional attributes as (to identify the role of the speaker) and to (to identify the addressee of the speech).
  • Ids in speeches, questions, answers, and others is now optional instead of required.
  • The li element now allows also paragraphs (p elements)
  • The metadata part is considerably modified: previously one had two separate sections for document references and persons. Now all external references have been unified in a single model, the concept of reference, of which documents, as well as persons, roles and organizations, are possible members. A generic element reference has been added, too. Section 10 of this document reflects the new approach to metadata.
  • All publication elements now have a name attribute to specify the kind of publication we are referring to, and the showAs attribute to specify a presentation mechanism for the publication name.
  • The whole description of naming of resources has been completely rethought and rewritten. This is reflected in section 10 of this document.

Differences between release 25/04/2006 and release 15/01/2006

  • All references to PAPI have been removed and substituted with Akoma Ntoso, both in the schema documents and the documentation (in the following forms: akomantoso, AKOMA NTOSO, and AN).
  • After registering the proper domain name, the namespace for Akoma Ntoso documents is now http://www.akomantoso.org/1.0.
  • All references to equivalences, both in the schema documents and documentation, have been removed. Schema is now fully and exclusively in English.

Differences between release 15/01/2006 and release 15/11/2005

  • PAPI is now really specified as version 1.0 instead of 2.0. Correspondingly, the namespace for this document class is now really defined as http://www.parliaments.info/PAPI/1.0.
  • The MISC category of document is now called simply <doc>. <doc> elements are to be used to specify documents that are neither acts (or having an act-like structure) nor debates (or having a debate-like structure). The previously existing document class <doc>, has been completely reorganized and restructured, by modifying the underlying content model, &OpenStructure;. Furthermore, existing document class <report> has been moved into the &OpenStructure; content model from &DebateStructure;.
  • Element <item> has completely changed role and content model, being now a hierarchical element providing support for a hierarchy of items. This is the main structure for hierarchies that are not legislative and thus are contained in generic <doc> elements.
  • Debates (as specified with the <subdivision> element) can now only contain just <speech> and <question> elements, since the <item> element has been reorganized for a different purpose and a different hierarchy.
  • The element <maincontent>, the backbone of the &OpenStructure; content model, has been completely redesigned. Instead of containing just block elements, it can now contain block elements, juridical hierarchical elements, and debate subdivisions and item hierarchies.
  • A new element <subtitle> has been added for hierarchical structures that contain subtitles in addition to number and title.
  • A new attribute has been added, numbering, to elements <maincontent> and <item>, for requesting that elements of a hierarchical structure are numbered by the displaying application, rather than carry their own numbers in the XML source.
  • Element <tocitem>, containing individual items of a table of content, now has an additional required level attribute to specify the hierarchical level of the <tocitem> element.
  • Metadata elements <uri> and <alias>, that in the previous versions had a text content model, now are markers, and have the corresponding value expressed in the value attribute. This definitely and completely aligns all metadata elements to the marker pattern, in order to avoid improper display of their values by unsuspecting XSLT stylesheets.

Differences between release 15/11/2005 and release 15/09/2005

  • PAPI is now specified as version 1.0 instead of 2.0 (references to previous attempts at PAPI have been removed). Correspondingly, the namespace for this document class is now defined as http://www.parliaments.info/PAPI/1.0.
  • Two new document classes have been added, <report> and <minutes>, to handle, respectively, Official Reports (or Hansards) and Official Minutes (or Votes and Proceedings). These two document classes use a new document structure, DebateStructure, that is added to HierarchicalStructure and OpenStructure.
  • Three new special elements have been added to handle the content of reports and minutes: speech, question and item. They are collected in a hierarchical structure of subdivisions, that provide nesting for such elements. 
  • A new marker element has been added, recordedTime, to handle the specification, anywhere in the text, of the moment in which the remark, agenda item or question was proposed.
  • A new section of meta elements has been added, persons, to list all the people whose remarks have been recorded in the minutes or reports.
  • Element item, within TOC (Table Of Content), has been renamed tocitem to avoid clashes with debates’ items. Also, element TOC has been converted into lowercase for consistency with other element names.
Previous: 9. Stylesheets