Specific Use Tags

JATS and versions 3.0 of the NLM Journal Publishing and Book DTDs contain an attribute "specific-use"; this attribute is not available in version 2.3 or earlier of the DTDs. This attribute is found in most elements and can be used very effective in place of processing instructions to set up information in the XML specific to your environment. While not widely needed in journals, this attribute is very useful in books. For example, if you have a paragraph that needs to be centered in the PDF, you could set up the following:

Paragraph<su>centered</su>

by selecting Specific Use from the eXtyles Insert Tag menu and then typing into the tags the text you want in the attribute. This results in the following XML

<p specific-use="centered">Paragraph</p>

This tag can be applied to figures, tables, boxes, extract quotes, lists, and paragraphs.

As another example, the markup:

1. Which refers to communicating between people about general information?
   1.  intrapersonal<su>2col</su>
   2.  impersonal
   3.  interpersonal
   4.  public
2.  Which speaking context refers to the values and beliefs of your audience?

specifies that the nested list items a through d should appear in a 2-column layout (note that this could also be accomplished with a two-column inline table, but then the 2-column layout would be required in both print and electronic formats, which using specific-use lets each rendering system display with a different layout).

This would give the following XML:

<list list-type="order" id="L1">
 <list-item><p>Which refers to communicating between people about general information?</p>
 <list specific-use="2col" list-type="alpha-lower" id="L2">
 <list-item><p>intrapersonal</p></list-item>
 <list-item><p>impersonal</p></list-item>
 <list-item><p>interpersonal</p></list-item>
 <list-item><p>public</p></list-item>
 </list>
 </list-item>
 <list-item><p>Which speaking context refers to the values and beliefs of your audience?</p></list-item>
 </list>

To apply specific use to a list item (rather than the entire list), it is necessary to use the List Item Specific Use tag at the end of the list item in question.
Another example of the specific-use attribute is to indicate a photo that should have a clipping path applied for rendering, as in:

In what ways can you be ethical in researching speech topics?<su>clip-path</su>

If this tag were used at the end of a photo caption, it would yield the following XML:

<fig id="fa" position="float" fig-type="photo" specific-use="clip-path">
 <caption><p>In what ways can you be ethical in researching speech topics?</p></caption>
 <graphic xlink:href="0-123456-78-9c003-fa"></graphic>
 </fig>