The following is amalgamated from two posts that Graham Bell, the Executive Director of EDItEUR, made to the ONIX Implementation Group. Anyone can join this Implementation Listserv and it's strongly recommended for anyone creating ONIX metadata from a database. It may be overkill for someone using another company's ONIX creation software but it has tips useful to anyone using the standard.
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Things to Remember: Embedding HTML (escaping vs CDATA and the best option, using XHTML with tags).
Remember that you're embedding your HTML in another company's webpage. Anything that could affect their CSS or formatting and any use of a URL will likely result in your work being stripped or not loaded. Header tags (h1, h2 etc) should NOT be used as they would interfere with the retailer's webpage.
Simple, clean, noninvasive XHTML is what belongs in appropriate in ONIX elements
Quick reference
- EDItEUR's Application Note: HTML markup in ONIX Also available as a Visual application note (like a webinar)
The full list of appropriate elements is below but text blocks – descriptions, and biographical information – are appropriate. All other data elements should NOT include any HTML, page returns or formatting of any kind. This includes Title and Contributor elements. Think of it this way: Data in ONIX is used by to fill data base fields and for indexing. Anything that doesn't belong in a database field can create problems, data loss and indexing issues. (ONIX 3.0 solves some of the need for formatting with specific "display" elements that are XHTML enabled, including one to display the Title and another for Contributor Statement.)
If you don't know anything about HTML there is more information in Editeur's Best Practices. http://www.w3schools.com/html/ is a good place to start and this explains the X in XHMTL http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_xhtml.asp Someone in your company is likely creating ebooks and would understand the terms being used here.
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<Text textformat="02"><p>This is some text marked up with HTML.</p></Text>
<Text textformat="02"><p>This is some text marked up with HTML.</p></Text>
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