Metanorma CLI 1.10.2: HTML Navigation Enhancements and ISO Document Refinements

Nick Nicholas on 09 Jul 2024

We are pleased to announce the release of Metanorma CLI version 1.10.2, the latest update in our biweekly release schedule. This version introduces significant improvements to HTML navigation, enhances number formatting capabilities, and includes several format-specific refinements to ensure compliance with organizational style guidelines.

General improvements

Enhanced HTML table of contents sidebar

A major enhancement in this release is the refinement of the HTML table of contents sidebar. This improvement:

Makes document navigation more intuitive and user-friendly
Ensures proper highlighting of the current section
Improves the responsiveness and visual consistency of the navigation interface
Enhances accessibility for users with different browsing environments

For users working with large, complex standards documents, this improvement significantly enhances the reading experience by providing clearer orientation within the document structure and more reliable navigation between sections.

Advanced number formatting controls

This release introduces powerful new number formatting capabilities, including the number:[] macro for fine-grained control over numerical presentations. These enhancements enable:

Consistent application of formatting rules to numbers throughout a document
More precise control over decimal places, significant figures, and notation styles
Support for specialized number representation requirements in different standards domains
Greater compliance with field-specific conventions for numerical data presentation

By providing more sophisticated number formatting tools, Metanorma now better serves fields with strict requirements for numerical precision and presentation, such as engineering, scientific, and financial standards.

Improved content division processing

We’ve enhanced the processing of lists, captions, and notes as unified divisions of content in HTML and DOC outputs. This improvement:

Creates more semantically meaningful document structures
Improves the visual consistency of related content elements
Enhances accessibility by grouping related content appropriately
Provides more predictable and appealing formatting of complex content structures

These refinements result in cleaner, more professional-looking documents that better preserve the logical relationships between content elements.

Bug fixes and optimizations

Several important bug fixes have been implemented in this release:

Corrected the naming of folders containing document attachments for output rendering
Modified the fontist option in compilation from no_install_fonts to install_fonts for more intuitive configuration
Implemented a safeguard to abort processing if empty tables are detected in markup, preventing potential errors in output generation

These fixes enhance the overall stability and reliability of the Metanorma toolchain, particularly for complex documents with numerous assets and attachments.

Format-specific improvements

ISO document enhancements

For users working with ISO standards, we’ve made several targeted improvements:

Rationalized the placement of predefined introductory text for Normative References and Terms and Definitions sections, ensuring compliance with ISO style guidelines
Added support for historical (pre-2014) document formats, allowing normative references as subclauses of the main clause with correct placement of predefined introductory text
Implemented automatic aborts when empty tables are detected, preventing the generation of non-compliant documents

These enhancements ensure that ISO documents produced with Metanorma maintain strict conformance with organizational style requirements while providing flexibility for historical document formats.

For IEEE standards, we’ve implemented consistent insertion of the "Abstract:" heading in Word outputs. This seemingly small change:

Ensures compliance with IEEE formatting requirements
Creates a more professional and consistent appearance across IEEE documents
Improves document navigability by clearly marking the abstract section
Supports automated processing and extraction of abstract content

This enhancement helps authors of IEEE standards produce more compliant and professional-looking documents with less manual intervention.

IHO document improvements

For International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) standards, we’ve added support for processing bibliographies entered as subclauses. This enhancement:

Provides more flexibility in organizing bibliographic content
Supports IHO-specific document organization patterns
Maintains proper formatting and numbering of bibliographic entries
Ensures compliance with IHO style guidelines

By supporting more sophisticated bibliography structures, this improvement makes Metanorma a more versatile tool for IHO standards development.

Conclusion

Metanorma CLI 1.10.2 delivers substantial improvements to HTML navigation, number formatting, and format-specific document processing. These enhancements reflect our ongoing commitment to making Metanorma a comprehensive and reliable solution for standards development across diverse technical domains and organizational contexts.

For more detailed information about the changes in this release, please refer to the individual gem release pages. As always, PDF rendering updates are not tracked separately but are incorporated into the overall improvements.

The successful release of Metanorma on various distribution platforms has been announced separately by the Metanorma team.

Release link: https://github.com/metanorma/metanorma-cli/releases/tag/v1.10.2

Announcement link: https://github.com/orgs/metanorma/discussions/6