Re: Extending DPub with new roles floating boxes and references?

Hi Richard,

First of all, thanks for your answer. I’ve quickly read the documentation on Aria 1.1, and I’ve found a very interesting use of the “math” role, that is very related with the two possible options that we have in RASH for describing mathematical formulas (mentioned my previous email), i.e., one with the use of mathml, and the other with the use of an image. I think I’ll integrate the approach in the version of RASH.

However, I still believe that the roles “figure” and “table” you suggested are not enough for addressing the scenarios I was talking about. Such roles maps quite well (and according to the Aria spec too) with the related existing HTML tags, as indicated by the “Related Concepts” relation. Now, it is clear that they may express similar (not identical) meaning, since an element having role “figure” are not the same element expressed by using the tag “figure”. However, the definitions are pretty close, and, as far as I understood, basically allow one to express any kind of floating boxes, i.e., “A perceivable section of content that typically contains a graphical document, images, code snippets, or example text”. However, what we want to do in RASH is to have a mechanism to clearly identify all these possible options, i.e.:
- sections expressing a floating box that contains an image;
- sections expressing a floating box that contains a math formula;
- sections expressing a floating box that contains a table;
- sections expressing a floating box that contains a code listing.

We believe that this could not be done by simply looking at the content of such sections, rather it should be clearly defined by appropriate roles which specialise that sections. Now, we use the HTML element “figure” to identify these kinds of sections, but what we really would like to do is, thus, to have a clear mechanism (e.g., by means of roles) to say “look, this element ‘figure’ actually is a floating box for a table, called table box” or “a floating box for a pure graphical image, called figure box”, etc. That particular characterisation seems not possible by means of Aria and DPub.

I was wondering if that would be a possible extension to consider for future release of DPub, since those roles seem very specific to the publishing domain to me.

Thanks again for your help with this.
Have a nice day :-)

S.


> Il giorno 26 ott 2015, alle ore 20:55, Richard Schwerdtfeger <schwer@us.ibm.com> ha scritto:
> 
> Silvio,
> 
> Aria 1.1 has a new Figure role and a Table role: http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#document_structure_roles <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#document_structure_roles>
> 
> Captions are referenced via aria-describedby and this is how HTML 5 will map the underlying caption to the figure. You can also use aria-labelledby for labels on figures, etc.
> 
> We also have a math role: http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#math <http://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/aria.html#math>
> 
> We don't have a formula role. 
> 
> We are discussing how to deal with specialized links in Sapporo this week. I am not sure how soon that will be resolved. We don't have a role="ref"
> 
> Rich
> 
> 
> Rich Schwerdtfeger
> 
> <graycol.gif>Silvio Peroni ---10/26/2015 12:18:57 PM---Hi all, I'm Silvio Peroni from University of Bologna, and I'm one of the contributors of RASH, the R
> 
> From: Silvio Peroni <silvio.peroni@unibo.it>
> To: <public-dpub-aria@w3.org>
> Date: 10/26/2015 12:18 PM
> Subject: Extending DPub with new roles floating boxes and references?
> 
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm Silvio Peroni from University of Bologna, and I'm one of the contributors of RASH, the Research Article in Simplified HTML format, available on github at http://github.com/essepuntato/rash <http://github.com/essepuntato/rash>, that has been already used in academic events (e.g., SAVE-SD 2015, http://cs.unibo.it/save-sd/2015/index.html <http://cs.unibo.it/save-sd/2015/index.html>).
> 
> The new version of RASH that will be released in the next 7 days, together with all its tools (visualisation, conversion, enhancement), will introduce some important features. The main one, in my opinion, is the fact that it is more HTML5-oriented and all the structural roles will be now provided by means of the attribute @role according to the value specified in:
> 
> [DPub] Digital Publishing WAI-ARIA Module 1.0 – W3C Editor's Draft. https://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/dpub.html <https://rawgit.com/w3c/aria/master/aria/dpub.html>
> 
> I have few questions for you on this topic.
> 
> 
> # Structural roles for floating boxes
> 
> In RASH there exist four different kinds of floating boxes (specified through the element "figure"), i.e.: figure box, table box, formula box, and listing box. As you can image, these are used to define referenceable boxes like it happens in other document-oriented languages such as LaTeX, ODT, etc.
> 
> In the version of RASH that will publish soon, these are specified by using the following roles (still by means of the attribute @role on "figure" elements): "picture", "table", "formula" and "listing", e.g.:
> 
> <figure id="figure_1" role="picture">
> <p>
> <img src="img/rash.png" alt="The RASH logo!"/>
> </p>
> <figcaption>Caption of the figure.</figcaption>
> </figure>
> 
> There is the possibility of adding some particular and official role in [DPub] that enables one to handle these specific structures?
> 
> Note that the disambiguation based on the content of "figure" can not hold sometimes, if, for instance, I want to express similar boxes with different kinds of contents. In RASH, that is the case of formulas, that can be expressed by means of either MathML or images, i.e.:
> 
> <figure id="formula_1" role="formula">
> <p>
> <img src="img/formula.png" alt="[a + b]^260 + [a + b]_i"/>
> </p>
> </figure>
> 
> and
> 
> <figure id="formula_1" role="formula">
> <p>
> <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML <http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML>">
> <mrow>
> <msup>
> <mfenced open="[" close="]">
> <mrow>
> <mi>a</mi>
> <mo>+</mo>
> <mi>b</mi>
> </mrow>
> </mfenced>
> <mn>260</mn>
> </msup>
> <mo>+</mo>
> <msub>
> <mfenced open="{" close="}">
> <mrow>
> <mi>a</mi>
> <mo>+</mo>
> <mi>b</mi>
> </mrow>
> </mfenced>
> <mi>i</mi>
> </msub>
> </mrow>
> </math>
> </p>
> </figure>
> 
> 
> # References to document objects (e.g., sections)
> 
> While in [DPub] there are roles for referring to footnotes (doc-noteref) and bibliographic entries (doc-biblioref), I've not found any role for pointing to other meaningful document components, such as sections, figures, formulas, tables and listings. RASH is using the ad-hoc role "ref" specified on the element "a", as shown in the following excerpt:
> 
> <p>In <a href="#metadata" role="ref"></a> we explain how to specify the metadata of the article as appropriate elements within <code>head</code>, while the rest of the document mainly pertains elements within the element <code>body</code>.</p>
> 
> ...
> 
> <section id="metadata">
> <h1>Metadata</h1>
> <p>...</p>
> </section>
> 
> What such "a" element with "ref" role creates is a specific link/reference to an existing object (a section in this case) that will be then rendered as, for instance, "Section 2" in the browser. 
> 
> This role seems to behave like the other references included in [DPub] (i.e., "doc-biblioref" and "doc-noteref"). What about adding a generic "ref" for dealing with references to other kinds of objects?
> 
> --------------
> 
> What do you think about these issues?
> 
> Have a nice day :-)
> 
> S.
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Silvio Peroni, Ph.D.
> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> University of Bologna, Bologna (Italy)
> Tel: +39 051 2094871
> E-mail: silvio.peroni@unibo.it
> Web: http://www.essepuntato.it <http://www.essepuntato.it/>
> Twitter: essepuntato
> 
> 



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Silvio Peroni, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Bologna, Bologna (Italy)
Tel: +39 051 2094871
E-mail: silvio.peroni@unibo.it
Web: http://www.essepuntato.it
Twitter: essepuntato