Metanorma CLI 1.11.2: Comprehensive Presentation XML Refinements and Advanced Language Support

Nick Nicholas on 12 Dec 2024

We are pleased to announce the release of Metanorma CLI version 1.11.2, continuing the significant architectural enhancements to Presentation XML that began with version 1.11.0. This release introduces comprehensive semantic annotation of document elements, further refinements to internationalization capabilities, and targeted improvements for specific document formats.

Presentation XML refactoring

Comprehensive semantic annotation

The major focus of this release is the implementation of semantic annotation throughout Presentation XML:

All instances of autonumbering, including in captions and cross-references, are now semantically annotated
All components of captions and cross-references have been semantically tagged
Cross-reference labels are now inserted for all blocks and clauses, including container instances
This enables consistent styling and behavior across different output formats
It supports more sophisticated rendering and processing of document elements

These enhancements represent a significant step in our ongoing architectural improvements to Presentation XML, ensuring more consistent, accurate, and semantically rich document rendering across all output formats.

Floating title preservation

Semantic XML for floating-title elements is now preserved alongside their Presentation XML rendering as paragraphs. This enhancement:

Maintains the structural significance of these elements in documents
Improves navigation and cross-referencing capabilities
Supports more sophisticated document processing and analysis
Enables better conversion between different output formats

Technical dependency management

To ensure stable processing, this release locks Nokogiri to version 1.16.8 to address a memory corruption bug in Nokogiri 1.17.0. Additionally, the XSLT preprocessing run on Presentation XML has been completely removed, streamlining the rendering pipeline and improving performance.

Cross-reference enhancements

Improved anchor and label handling

Several important improvements to anchor and label handling have been implemented:

Preemptive insertion of anchors for all ordered list items, ensuring they always have labels
Nonbreaking spaces in all document identifiers in cross-references for consistent presentation
Capitalization of cross-reference contents now respects XML markup
Enumeration commas are semantically marked up for precise typographic control

Whitespace control

Several refinements to whitespace handling ensure more precise document formatting:

Redundant blank spaces in termnote label templates have been removed
Space handling around localized punctuation has been improved
XML indentation during internal manipulation has been eliminated to prevent unintended whitespace

Internationalization enhancements

Punctuation localization improvements

Several refinements to punctuation localization for East Asian languages have been implemented:

Spaces around commas inserted as part of punctuation localization are now properly stripped
Detection of CJK characters when performing punctuation localization has been fixed
Kanji is now used instead of katakana for "and" in Japanese

French language support

French internationalization has been improved with proper handling of note delimiters (Note : …), ensuring compliance with French typographic conventions.

Format-specific improvements

IETF document enhancements

For Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) documents, several targeted improvements have been made:

Fixed rendering of anchors on dt, dd elements in RFC XML
Debugged insertion of <u> for unicode characters to properly handle XML escapes
Corrected single-clause annex cross-reference generation
Updated journal article rendering in bibliographies

IHO document improvements

For International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) standards, we’ve:

Removed "I" in Annex numbering sequence
Removed "Annex" but preserved "Appendix" before cross-references to assets within appendixes
Fixed single-clause annex cross-reference generation

BIPM document enhancements

For Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) documents, we’ve improved:

Journal article rendering in the bibliography
Home standard rendering in the bibliography to include ISO, IEC, and BIPM standards
French internationalization of the note delimiter

Collections cross-reference enhancements

Improved safeguarding of document references

Cross-reference lookup between documents in collections has been enhanced:

The system now safeguards lookups of documents by eref/@citeas against variations between non-breaking spaces and regular spaces in document identifiers
This ensures more reliable cross-referencing in complex document collections
It reduces errors in navigation between related documents
It improves the overall robustness of document collections

Validation improvements

Flavour stack verification

The system now validates that no Metanorma gems are missing from the prescribed flavour stack, ensuring:

Consistent behavior across different environments
Early detection of incomplete installations
Clear error messages when required components are missing
More reliable document processing

Additionally, metanorma-un has been removed from the flavour stack as it is being deprecated.

Conclusion

Metanorma CLI 1.11.2 delivers comprehensive semantic annotation throughout Presentation XML, enhanced cross-reference handling, improved internationalization support, and numerous format-specific refinements. These enhancements continue the architectural improvements introduced in version 1.11.0, further advancing our goal of providing consistent, precise, and semantically rich document rendering across all output formats.

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.

Release link: https://github.com/metanorma/metanorma-cli/releases/tag/v1.11.2

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