DocBook 5: The Definitive Guide

Name

termdef — An inline definition of a term

Synopsis

termdef ::= (text | Bibliography inlines | Error inlines | Graphic inlines | GUI inlines | Indexing inlines | Keyboard inlines | Linking inlines | Markup inlines | Math inlines | Object-oriented programming inlines | Operating system inlines | Product inlines | Programming inlines | Publishing inlines | Technical inlines | Ubiquitous inlines)*

Attribute synopsis

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

Additional attributes:

• baseform

• sortas

Additional constraints

• A termdef must contain exactly one firstterm.

Description

A termdef is an inline term definition. Some styles of documentation collect all terms together in a glossary of some sort, but another style is to place the definitions inline.

The glossary and glosslist elements support the former style, termdef the latter.

Every term should have an xml:id attribute to uniquely identify it. The content of the termdef is the definition of the term. Often it is valuable to word the definition so that it will stand alone, in case it becomes useful to extract all the terms into a separate glossary in addition to having them defined inline.

Every termdef must contain exactly one firstterm. The firstterm identifies the actual term defined by the termdef.

Processing expectations

Formatted inline.

Attributes

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

baseform

Specifies the base form of the term, the one that appears in the glossary. This allows adjectival, plural, and other variations of ...