Warning

This gem is still under development.

Formerly known as asciidoctor-iso.

Functionality

This gem processes Metanorma documents following a template for generating ISO International Standards. The following outputs are generated.

• The XML representation of the document, intended as a document model for ISO International Standards.

• The XML representation is processed in turn to generate the following outputs as end deliverable ISO standard drafts.

  • Microsoft Word output (.doc), following the style conventions of the ISO Standard Microsoft Word template.

  • HTML. For ISO, two HTML files are generated: the .html file follows ISO conventions in rendering, which looks very similar to the Word output, while the -alt.html file has richer styling.

  • PDF. Not supported for the ISO gem, but available for other specifications, generated from the HTML file.

The following input formats are supported:

• Asciidoctor (This AsciiDoc syntax for writing ISO standards is hereby named "AsciiISO".)

This README provides an overview of the functionality of the gem; see also Guidance for authoring ISO standards using the gem. The Quickstart guide gives a summary overview.

Note	AsciiMathML is used for mathematical formatting. The gem uses the Ruby AsciiMath parser, which is syntactically stricter than the common MathJax processor; if you do not get expected results, try bracketting terms your in AsciiMathML expressions.

Usage

The preferred way to invoke this gem is via the metanorma script:

$ metanorma --type iso a.adoc                   # output HTML and DOC
$ metanorma --type csd --extensions html a.adoc # output just HTML
$ metanorma --type csd --extensions doc a.adoc  # output just DOC
$ metanorma --type csd --extensions xml a.adoc  # output CSD XML

The gem translates the document into ISO XML format, and then validates its output against the ISO XML document model; errors are reported to console against the XML, and are intended for users to check that they have provided all necessary components of the document.

The gem then converts the XML into HTML and DOC.

Installation

If you are using a Mac, the https://github.com/riboseinc/metanorma-macos-setup repository has instructions on setting up your machine to run Metanorma scripts such as this one. You need only run the following in a Terminal console:

$ bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/riboseinc/metanorma-macos-setup/master/metanorma-setup)
$ gem install metanorma-iso

Content Warnings

The gem also realises several format checks as prescribed in ISO/IEC DIR 2:2018, and warns the user about them in the console:

• Numbers with what looks like dots instead of commas for decimal points.

• Groups of numbers without spacing for every three digits. (The gem attempts to ignore ISO references.)

• No space before percent sign.

• No bracketing of tolerance in percentage (e.g. 15 ± 7 % .)

• No recommendations, permissions or requirements (detected by keyword) in: foreword, scope, introduction, term examples and examples, notes, footnotes.

• No subclauses that are the only child of a clause. (In clauses, annexes, or scopes.)

• 5 levels of subclause nesting. (Never actuated, AsciiDoc only permits 4 levels of subsections.)

• Non-ISO/IEC reference turning up as normative.

• Term definition starts with an article, or ends with a period.

• Title intro or title part appears in only one of French or English.

In addition, the gem checks all terms cited from the IEV Electropedia against the online IEV Electropedia entry, and issues a warning if the term is different.

Approach

Document model

The document model ("IsoDoc") used in document generation intends to introduce rigour into the ISO standards authoring process; the existing Microsoft Word template from ISO do not support such rigour down to the element level. It also introduces flexibility by decoupling the document structure from its presentation.

The ISO International Standard format is prescribed in ISO/IEC DIR 2 "Principles and rules for the structure and drafting of ISO and IEC documents", to a level amenable to an explicit document model. A formal document model would allow checking for consistency in format and content, and expedite authoring and quality control of ISO standards. Authoring standards through a more abstract formal model also permit enhanced functionality such as cross-reference link checking and auto-numbering of sections, figures, tables and formulas. Outputting a document in different languages also becomes straightforward.

The document model for ISO Standards specifically is derived from a more general StandardDocument model. Other ISO-like standards can also be derived from this more general model; CSD (https://github.com/riboseinc/csd, https://github.com/riboseinc/metanorma-csd) is one such instance.

The document model for ISO Standards contains all the structures described in ISO/IEC DIR 2. It is expressed as a Relax NG Compact schema; actual validation occurs against its full Relax NG counterpart.

Asciidoctor

Asciidoctor has been selected as the authoring tool to generate the document model representation of ISO standards. It is a document formatting tool like Markdown and DocBook, which combines the relative ease of use of the former (using relatively lightweight markup), and the rigour and expressively of the latter (it has a well-defined syntax, and was in fact initially developed as a DocBook document authoring tool). Asciidoctor has built-in capability to output Text and HTML; so it can be used to preview the file as it is being authored. However the gem natively outputs HTML and Word output, so there should not be much need for this.

In order to generate HTML preview output close to what is intended in the ISO standard, the Asciidoc document includes a fair amount of formatting instructions (e.g. disabling section numbering where appropriate, the titling of Appendixes as Annexes), as well as ISO boilerplate text, and predefined section headers (sections are recognised by fixed titles such as Normative References). Authoring ISO standards in this fashion assumes that users will be populating an Asciidoc template, and not removing needed formatting instructions.

Asciidoctor has some formatting constraints because of its own document model, that users need to be aware. For example, Asciidoc has a strict division between inline and block elements, which disallows certain kinds of nesting; so a list cannot be embedded within a paragraph, it can only constitute its own paragraph (though lists themselves can be nested within each other). Asciidoctor also disallows multiple paragraphs in footnotes, by design. (The document model does not impose this constraint, so you could edit the generated XML to break up paragraphs within a footnote.)

Asciidoctor model additions

Refer also to https://github.com/riboseinc/metanorma-standoc/blob/master/README.adoc; this section lists additions specific only to metanorma-iso

Additional warning types

Asciidoctor natively supports the ISO admonitions "Caution", "Warning", and "Important" through its admonition syntax:

CAUTION: This is a single-block caution

[WARNING]
====
This is a

multiple-block warning
====

If the admonitions "Danger" and "Safety Precaution" are needed, they should be indicated through a type attribute, which will override the admonition type appearing in the Asciidoc:

[type=Danger]
CAUTION: This is a single-block caution

[WARNING,type=Safety Precaution]
====
This is a

multiple-block warning
====

Features not visible in HTML preview

The gem uses built-in Asciidoc formatting as much as possible, so that users can retain the ability to preview documents; for Terms and Definitions clauses, which have a good deal of explicit structure, macros have been introduced for semantic markup (admitted terms, deprecated terms, etc).

The default HTML output of an Asciidoc-formatted ISO document is quite close to the intended final output, with the following exceptions, and with the additional exceptions listed above as markup introduced for ISO markup. Note that the final outputs of the conversion (Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML) do not have these exceptions, and comply with the ISO Standard specifications.

• Terms and Definitions: each term is marked up as an unnumbered subclause, the semantic markup of alternate and other terms is not rendered visually.

• Formulas: Asciidoctor has no provision for the automated numbering of isolated block formulas ("stem"), and does not display the number assigned a block formula in its default HTML processor—although it does provide automated numbering of examples. Formula numbering is provided in the final outputs of the conversion.

• Missing elements: The document model does not yet include Asciidoc elements that do not appear to be relevant to ISO Standards; these will be ignored in generating ISO XML. Those elements include:

  • sidebars (aside) (as distinct from warnings),

  • ASCII art/preformatted text (literal) (as distinct from sourcecode listings),

  • page breaks (thematic break).

• Markup: Some connecting text which is used to convey markup structure is left out: in particular, DEPRECATED and SOURCE (replaced by formatting macros).

• Tables: Table footnotes are treated like all other footnotes: they are rendered at the bottom of the document, rather than the bottom of the table, and they are not numbered separately.

• Cross-references: Footnoted cross-references are indicated with the reference text fn in isolation, or fn: as a prefix to the reference text. The default HTML processor leaves these as is: if no reference text is given, only fn will be displayed (though it will still hyperlink to the right reference).

• References: The convention for references is that ISO documents are cited without brackets by ISO number, and optionally year, whether they are normative or in the bibliography (e.g. ISO 20483:2013); while all other references are cited by bracketed number in the bibliography (e.g. [1]). The default HTML processor treats all references the same, and will bracket them (e.g. [ISO 20483:2013]). For the same reason, ISO references listed in the bibliography will be listed under an ISO reference, rather than a bracketed number.

• References: References are rendered cited throughout, since they are automated. For that reason, if reference is to be made to both an undated and a dated version of an ISO reference, these need to be explicitly listed as separate references. (This is not done in the Rice model document, which lists ISO 6646, but under Terms and Definitions cites the dated ISO 6646:2011.

• References: ISO references that are undated but published have their date indicated under the ISO standards format in an explanatory footnote. Because of constraints introduced by Asciidoctor, that explanation is instead given in square brackets in Asciidoc format.

• Annexes: Subheadings cannot preserve subsection numbering, while also appearing inline with their text (e.g. Rice document, Annex B.2): they appear as headings in separate lines.

• Annexes: Cross-references to Annex subclauses are automatically prefixed with Clause rather than Annex or nothing.

• Metadata: Document metadata such as document numbers, technical committees and title wording are not rendered in the default HTML output.

• Patent Notice: Patent notices are treated and rendered as a subsection of the introduction, with an explicit subheading.

• Numbering: The numbering of figures and tables is sequential in the default HTML processor: it does not include the Clause or Annex number. This, Figure 1, not Figure A.1.

• Notes: There is no automatic note numbering by the default HTML processor.

• Review Notes: The reviewer on the review note is not displayed.

• Keys: Keys to formulas and figures are expected to be marked up as definition lists consistently, rather than as inline prose.

• Figures: Simple figures are marked up as images, figures containing subfigures as examples. Numbering by the default HTML processor may be inconsistent. Subfigures are automatically numbered as independent figures.

• Markup: The default HTML processor does not support CSS extensions such as small caps or strike through, though these can be marked up as CSS classes through custom macros in Asciidoctor: a custom CSS stylesheet will be needed to render them.

Bibliography integration

Bibliographic entries for ISO standards are expected to use the standard document identifier as the item label; e.g.

* [[[ref1,ISO 712]]], _Cereals and cereal products -- Determination of moisture content -- Reference method_

By default, the isobib gem is used to look up the reference details for any item label prefixed with ISO on the ISO web site. The full bibliographic details of the item are screenscraped from the ISO site and inserted into the XML file (although only the title of the reference is used in rendering). The Electropedia termbank is queried in validation, to confirm that the cited entries in Terms and Definitions are the same as what is cited online; those queries are routed through the iev gem

The results of all isobib searches done to date, across all documents, are cached in the global cache file ~/.relaton-bib.pstore, so they do not need to be re-fetched each time a document is processed. (The web query takes a few seconds per reference.)

The results of all isobib searches done to date for the current document (filename.adoc) are stored in the same directory as the current document, in the file {filename}.relaton.pstore. The local cache overrides entries in the global cache, and can be manually edited. The local cache is only used if the :local-cache: or :local-cache-only: document attribute is set.

If the document attribute :no-isobib: is set, the reference details for items are not looked up via isobib, and the isobib caches are not used. If the document attribute :no-isobib-cache: is set, the reference details for items are still looked up via isobib, but the isobib caches are not used.

Any entry in the cache that corresponds to an undated ISO reference fetches its details from the latest available entry on the ISO web site. If the entry is more than 60 days old, it is refetched.

The results of all iev searches done to date across all documents are cached in the global cache fule ~/iev.pstore, and the results of all iev searches done to date for the current document are stored in the same directory as the current document, in the file (filename).iev.pstore.

Document Attributes

The gem relies on Asciidoctor document attributes to provide necessary metadata about the document. These include:

:nodoc:

Do not generate Word and HTML output, only generate XML output. Can be used as a command-line option (like all other document attributes): asciidoctor -a nodoc -b iso -r "metanorma-iso" a.adoc

:novalid:

Suppress validation.

:flush-caches:

If set, delete and reinitialise the cache of isobib searches for ISO references from the ISO web site.

:no-isobib:

If set, do not use the isobib or iev gem functionality to look up ISO and IEV references online, nor the cache of isobib and iev searches.

:no-isobib-cache:

If set, use the isobib and iev gem functionality to look up ISO and IEV references online, but do not use the cache of isobib and iev searches.

:local-cache:

Use the local isobib and iev search caches to override the global isobib and iev search caches.

:local-cache-only:

Use the local isobib and iev search caches to the exclusion of the global isobib and iev search caches.

:i18nyaml:

Name of YAML file of internationalisation text, to use instead of the built-in English, French or Chinese text used to label parts of the document (e.g. "Table", "Foreword", boilerplate text for Normative References, etc.) Use if you wish to output an ISO standard in a language other than those three. A sample YAML file for English, with "Foreword" replaced with "Frontispiece", is available at spec/examples/english.yaml.

:docnumber:

The ISO document number (mandatory)

:tc-docnumber:

The document number assigned by the Technical committee

:partnumber:

The ISO document part number. (This can be "part-subpart" if this is an IEC document.)

:edition:

The document edition

:revdate:

The date the document was last updated

:draft:

The document draft (used in addition to document stage, for multiple iterations: expected format X.Y)

:copyright-year:

The year which will be claimed as when the copyright for the document was issued

:library-ics:

The ICS (International Categorization for Standards) number for the standard. There may be more than one ICS for a document; if so, they should be comma-delimited. (The ics identifier is added to the document metadata, but is not output to the current document templates.)

:title-intro-en:

The introductory component of the English title of the document

:title-main-en:

The main component of the English title of the document (mandatory). (The first line of the AsciiDoc document, which contains the title introduced with =, is ignored)

:title-part-en:

The English title of the document part

:title-intro-fr:

The introductory component of the French title of the document. (This document template presupposes authoring in English; a different template will be needed for French, including French titles of document components such as annexes.)

:title-main-fr:

The main component of the French title of the document (mandatory).

:title-part-fr:

The French title of the document part

:doctype:

The document type (see ISO deliverables: The different types of ISO publications ) (mandatory). The permitted types are: international-standard, technical-specification, technical-report, publicly-available-specification, international-workshop-agreement, guide.

:docstage:

The stage code for the document status (see International harmonized stage codes)

:docsubstage:

The substage code for the document status (see International harmonized stage codes)

:iteration:

The iteration of a stage, in case there have been multiple drafts (e.g. 2 on a CD: this is the second iteration through the CD stage).

:secretariat:

The national body acting as the secretariat for the document in the deafting stage

:technical-committee-number:

The number of the relevant ISO technical committee (also :technical-committee-number_2:, :technical-committee-number_3:…​; the same applies for all technical-committee, subcommittee and workgroup attributes)

:technical-committee-type:`

The type of the relevant technical committee. Defaults to TC if not supplied. Values: TC1, `PC, JTC, JPC.

:technical-committee:

The name of the relevant ISO technical committee (mandatory)

:subcommittee-number:

The number of the relevant ISO subcommittee

:subcommittee-type:

The type of the relevant ISO subcommittee. Defaults to SC if not supplied. Values: SC, JSC.

:subcommittee:

The name of the relevant ISO subcommittee

:workgroup-number:

The number of the relevant ISO workgroup

:workgroup-type:

The type of the relevant ISO workgroup. Defaults to WG if not supplied. Example values: JWG, JAG, AG (advisory group), AHG, SWG, SG, MA (maintenance agency), CORG, JCG, CAG

:workgroup:

The name of the relevant ISO workgroup

:language:

The language of the document (en or fr). Defaults to en.

:script:

The script of the document (defaults to Latn). Must be supplied as Hans for Simplified Chinese.

:publisher:

The standards agency publishing the standard; can be multiple (comma-delimited). Defaults to ISO.

:body-font:

Font for body text; will be inserted into CSS. Defaults to Cambria for Latin script, SimSun for Simplified Chinese.

:header-font:

Font for headers; will be inserted into CSS. Defaults to Cambria for Latin script, SimHei for Simplified Chinese.

:monospace-font

Font for monospace; will be inserted into CSS. Defaults to Courier New.

:htmlstylesheet

SCSS stylesheet to use for HTML output. Defaults to built in stylesheet, which adheres with ISO formatting requirements. Recommend against overriding this.

:htmlcoverpage

HTML template for cover page. Defaults to built in template. Recommend against overriding this.

:htmlintropage

HTML template for introductory section. Defaults to built in template. Recommend against overriding this.

:scripts

Javascript scripts for HTML output. Defaults to built in scripts. Recommend against overriding this.

:scripts-pdf

Javascript scripts for HTML > PDF output. Defaults to built in scripts. Recommend against overriding this.

:wordstylesheet

Primary SCSS stylesheet to use for Word output. Defaults to built in stylesheet, which adheres with ISO formatting requirements. Recommend against overriding this.

:standardstylesheet

Secondary SCSS stylesheet use for Word output. Defaults to built in stylesheet, which adheres with ISO formatting requirements. Recommend against overriding this.

:header

Header and footer file for Word output. Defaults to built in template. Recommend against overriding this.

:wordcoverpage

Word template for cover page. Defaults to built in template. Recommend against overriding this.

:wordintropage

Word template for introductory section. Defaults to built in template. Recommend against overriding this.

:ulstyle

Word CSS selector for unordered lists in supplied stylesheets. Defaults to value for built in stylesheet. Recommend against overriding this.

:olstyle

Word CSS selector for ordered lists in supplied stylesheets. Defaults to value for built in stylesheet. Recommend against overriding this.

:data-uri-image

Encode all images in HTML output as inline data-URIs.

The attribute :draft:, if present, includes review notes in the XML output; these are otherwise suppressed.

The document proper can reference the values of document attributes, which is convenient for reusability. For example, the Rice Model document references the editorial groups that have contributed to the document as

This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC {technical-committee-number}, _{technical-committee}_, Subcommittee SC {subcommittee-number}, _{subcommittee}_.

If the corresponding document attributes are not populated in the header, then the references themselves will not be populated.

Data Models

The IsoDoc data model (IsoStandardDocument) is instantiated from the StandardDocument model. For details please visit that page.

Code Structure

The gem invokes the following other gems as a division of labour.

• This gem generates the IsoDoc XML proper

• https://github.com/riboseinc/isodoc renders IsoDoc XML into HTML

• https://github.com/riboseinc/html2doc converts HTML into Microsoft Word

• https://github.com/riboseinc/isodoc-models derives the ISO Standard grammar used for validation from the generic IsoDoc grammar

Examples

The gem has been tested to date against the "Rice document", the ISO’s model document of an international standard. Sample representation of the Rice document in Asciidoctor, and output formats, are included in the https://github.com/riboseinc/isodoc-rice repository.

See also spec/metanorma-iso for individual features.