Formal metadata: information and software
Formal metadata information and software
This program is a compiler to parse formal metadata, checking the syntax against the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata and generating output suitable for viewing with a web browser or text editor. It runs on Linux and UNIX systems and on PC's running all versions of Microsoft Windows (95 and up including XP). MP generates a textual report indicating errors in the metadata, primarily in the structure but also in the values of some of the scalar elements (that is, those whose values are restricted by the standard).
The compiler, its source code, executables for UNIX (Solaris and Linux) and Microsoft Windows, and its own formal metadata are available through <http://geology.usgs.gov/tools/metadata/>
A separate document shows the revision history of mp (that page is generated automatically by extracting the information from Process_Step elements found in mp's metadata).
mp [options] input_file
where input_file is the name of a text file containing metadata
encoded as described in the encoding format
document or in SGML conforming to a specific
Document Type Definition (DTD). These command-line options are available:
-c cfile | obtains configuration information from cfile |
-e efile | directs syntax errors to efile |
-t tfile | creates text output in tfile |
-h hfile | creates html output in hfile |
-f ffile | creates FAQ-style html output in ffile |
-s sfile | creates sgml output in sfile |
-d dfile | creates DIF output in dfile |
-x xfile | creates XML output in xfile |
-l code | indicates element names are in the language identified by code |
Syntax error messages indicate the nature of discrepancies between
the input file and the standard, and the line numbers of the relevant
elements in the input file. If -e efile
is not specified,
syntax errors are written to stderr, which is usually the console
(for MS-DOS) or the terminal from which the compiler is launched.
mp catfish.met -e catfish.err
A report of errors is written to the file catfish.err.
mp catfish.met -e catfish.err -h catfish.html
In addition to the error report, an outline-style HTML page is
created, named catfish.html.
mp catfish.met -e catfish.err -h catfish.html -f catfish.faq.html
In addition to the error report and outline-style HTML page, a
FAQ-style HTML page is created, named catfish.faq.html.
NOTE: mp now provides in its HTML output a link to each of the other output formats that you requested when running mp. These links are relative to the current directory by default, and will work correctly when someone retrieves a metadata record directly through a web server. However, HTML metadata records retrieved through the Clearinghouse gateway interface come tagged with the URL of the gateway, consequently these links will not work by default with HTML records found through the gateway interface. To make these links work without regard to the retrieval method, place a BASE tag into the HEAD element of the output HTML code. As you might guess, mp can do this for you, but it needs to know the URL where your metadata will be available as web pages. It gets this information from a config file entry as follows:
output: html: base: URLSo if your web site has a URL like
http://www.our-data.org/metadata/that will contain your metadata records, put this into your config file:
output: html: base: http://www.our-data.org/metadata/Obviously you have to use the -c config_file command line option for mp, substituting for config_file the name of the actual config file you'll be using.
mp is able to interpret metadata element names written in several
languages. To use this feature, include the -l
option
on the command line or the language
option within the
input
section of the config file.
In each case the language is specified using a 2-letter abbreviation
from the following table:
en | English (default) |
es | Spanish |
ca | Catalan |
id | Indonesian |
fr | French |
Translations should be regarded as a work in progress. I seek help with them, especially with languages that are not currently implemented and with new profiles and extensions. A separate table shows the current translation of element names in the various languages supported. Feel free to discuss with me any ways you would like to help with this effort.
Peter N. Schweitzer Mail Stop 954, National Center U.S. Geological Survey Reston, VA 20192 Tel: (703) 648-6533 FAX: (703) 648-6252 Email: pschweitzer@usgs.gov