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This is a basic introduction to the CNXML language. It includes a description on how to begin a CNXML module and also examples of the basic tags needed to start writing in CNXML.

Starting with cnxml

CNXML is a lightweight XML markup language for marking up educational content. The goal of CNXML is to conveythe content of the material and not a particular presentation. Connexions uses the Connexions Markup Language (CNXML) as its primary language for storing documents. Now let's get started!

Cnxml tags

Document

All CNXML documents have as their root the document tag. Everything about the document including it's metadata and content are containedwithin the document tag. It is important that you understand the basic structure for a CNXML document. The structure isas follows:

    Document (root tag)

  • Title
  • Metadata Section
  • Content Section

The document tag has one required attribute:

  • id - a unique ID given to the document.
This is automatically assigned.

Id requirements

One major difference between CNXML and other markup languages is the id attribute requirement. Certain tags require that you include the id attribute, but all can possess an id . The tags requiring an id are listed below:

  • document
  • para
  • equation
  • list
  • rule
  • definition
  • exercise
  • table
  • div
  • section
  • subfigure
  • example
  • footnote
  • problem
  • solution
  • block quotes
  • media
  • meaning
  • proof
  • list
  • preformat
  • block code
  • figure
  • block notes
So, if you are going to use any of the above tags, be sure to add the id attribute and give it a unique 'id'. Be aware that in CNXML 0.6 ids will be generated automatically, but you are still permitted to specify you own ids if you wish.

Here is an example of a couple of paras containing a user generated ids.

<para id='uniqueid1'>This is an example to illustrate the use of the<code>id</code>attribute.</para><para id='uniqueid2'>This paragraph has a different id than the last.</para>
Any tag can contain an id attribute. This is useful if you want to link to the information contained in a particular tag.

Namespaces

The document tag should also contain any namespace declarations. Namespaces allow us to easily use other mark-up languages within CNXML without having toworry about whether tag name collision will occur. For simple documents using only CNXML, you need to include theCNXML namespace attribute . Any additional languages need to be declared as well andshould be given their own prefixes. For example, to associate the MathML namespace with the prefix "m",include the following attribute: xmlns:m='http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML' . This states that any tag with a prepended "m" will beinterpreted as a MathML tag while any tag without a prefix will be interpreted as CNXML. The document tag should also contain the metadata namespace xmlns:md="http://cnx.rice.edu/mdml/0.4" , the bibtex namspace xmlns:bib="http://bibtexml.sf.net/" , and the question markup language xmlns:q="http://cnx.rice.edu/qml/1.0" .

This what the document tag should look like.

<document xmlns="http://cnx.rice.edu/cnxml" xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"xmlns:md="http://cnx.rice.edu/mdml/0.4" xmlns:bib="http://bibtexml.sf.net/"xmlns:q="http://cnx.rice.edu/qml/1.0" id="m9000" module-id="" cnxml-version="0.6">
Be aware that the you document id can not be the same as this example. Each module will have its own unique id.

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Source:  OpenStax, Connexions tutorial and reference (中文指導及參考 - chinese). OpenStax CNX. Mar 09, 2006 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10340/1.2
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