The d element

Usage Example

<p><d>"What a curious feeling!"</d> said <name>Alice</name>, 
    <d>"I must be shutting up like a telescope."</d></p>
    

Allowed parents

address, annoref, annotation (block variant), annotation (phrase variant), m:annotation-xml, aside (block variant), aside (toc variant), block, caption, citation (block variant), citation (phrase variant), d, definition, description (block variant), description (phrase variant), emph, entry (bibliography variant), entry (glossary variant), entry (index variant), entry (toc variant), expansion, xforms:group, h, hd, hpart, item, xforms:label, ln, d:longdesc, meta, note (block variant), note (phrase variant), noteref, object (block variant), object (phrase variant), sel:otherwise, p, ssml:phoneme, ssml:prosody, quote (block variant), quote (phrase variant), its:rb, ref, xforms:repeat, its:rt, s, ssml:say-as (phrase variant), ssml:say-as (text variant), d:simplifiedLanguageDescription, span, ssml:sub, d:summary, td, term, th, d:tour and sel:when

Allowed children

This element may contain text.

This element may contain the following children: abbr, address, annoref, annotation, ssml:break, char, citation, code, d, definition, emph (text variant), emph (phrase variant), expansion, xforms:input, rend:linebreak, ln, m:math, name, note, noteref, num, object (text variant), object (phrase variant), pagebreak, ssml:phoneme (text variant), ssml:phoneme (phrase variant), ssml:prosody (text variant), ssml:prosody (phrase variant), quote, xforms:range, ref, its:ruby, s, ssml:say-as (text variant), ssml:say-as (phrase variant), xforms:secret, sel:select, xforms:select, xforms:select1, span (text variant), span (phrase variant), sub, ssml:sub (text variant), ssml:sub (phrase variant), sup, term, xforms:textarea, time, ssml:token (text variant), ssml:token (phrase variant) and w

Content model and additional requirements

Namespace

http://www.daisy.org/ns/z3998/authoring/

Usage Details

If a document includes a dramatis personae, character dialogue can explicitly reference the speaker. A list of characters will typically appear directly in the body of the work, but can also be embedded in a document header using meta elements when none is provided. A typical example of a dramatis personae follows:

<section typeof="dramatis-personae">
    <h>Dramatis Personae</h>
    <list>
        <item xml:id="alice" about="#alice">
            <name property="persona">Alice</name> — <span property="role-description">a little girl</span>.
        </item>
        <item xml:id="rabbit" about="#rabbit">
            <name property="persona">White Rabbit</name> — <span property="role-description">fellow who is late for a very important date</span>.
        </item>
        <item xml:id="mouse" about="#mouse">
            <name property="persona">Mouse</name> — <span property="role-description">small rodent at the bottom of the rabbit hole</span>.
        </item>
    </list>
</section>
        

In the above example, the RDFa attributes about and property are used to augment the standard list of character names. The about attribute on each list item identifies which character the information applies to, while the property attribute specifies what each child element is defining (the predefined value persona is a short-hand from the Z39.98-2012 Structural Semantics Vocabulary that establishes that each is a character in the work and role-description that each span describes the character's role).

With a clearly defined dramatis personae, all dialogue in the work can now be linked back to each character's definition by attaching a ref attribute to each d element:

<p>She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, 
    <d ref="alice">‘Which way? Which way?’</d></p>
        

The advantage of clearly establishing who is speaking in this way is that a processing agent could now inform a reader which character is speaking as well provide any additional information about that person specified in their dramatis personae entry (or otherwise associated with the character).