Creating Meta Information Topics

The DocInfo meta information section is primarily intended for information about information. In the DocBook markup language, Meta information for a help volume is contained in the DocInfo element that may occur as the first component of a Part. DocInfo contains information about the help volume's title and authors, may contain legal notices about copyrights and trademarks, and abstracts of the volume's contents.

DocInfo may contain the following elements in the following order:

Title (required)
TitleAbbrev (optional)
Subtitle (optional)
one or more AuthorGroups (required)
any number of Abstracts (optional)
a RevHistory (optional)
any number of LegalNotices (optional)

To Create a Meta Information Section

Enter the <DocInfo> tag to start the section, and follow immediately with the required Title element, as shown:
<DocInfo> <title>Volume Title Here</title>
Enter the optional TitleAbbrev and Subtitle elements if needed.
Enter the required AuthorGroup element, which contains one or more Authors, Collabs, or CorpAuthors, in any order.

Enter the optional Abstract and LegalNotice elements if needed, following these syntax models:

<Abstract Id="SDL-RESERVED-abstract">
        <Para>abstract here</Para>
</Abstract>
 
<LegalNotice Id="SDL-RESERVED-copyright">
        <BlockQuote>
                <Para>© year & copyright holder's name</Para>
        </BlockQuote>
</LegalNotice>

Enter the DocInfo end tag to end the section.

The Abstract section is recommended. Applications that access help volumes can use this information to present a brief description of the volume. Because the abstract might be displayed in plain text windows avoid including any DocBook markup in the abstract.

Example

Here's a markup for typical meta information section contained in the DocInfo element:

<DocInfo>
<title>Report Master, Version 1.0</title>
 
<AuthorGroup>
        <Author>Jim Jonas</Author>
</AuthorGroup>
 
<Abstract>
        <Para>This is the online help for the mythical Report Master application. This help includes a self-guided tutorial, a summary of common tasks, general concepts, and quick reference summaries.</Para>
</Abstract>
 
<LegalNotice>
        <BlockQuote>
                <Para>
        Version 1.0
        &copy; Copyright Reports Incorporated 1995
        All rights reserved.
                </Para>
        </BlockQuote>
</LegalNotice>
</DocInfo>

The BlockQuote element is used to preserve the line breaks in the copyright notice. The © entity inserts the copyright symbol.

Creating Meta Information Topics

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To Create a Meta Information Section

Example