July 15, 2024 ScML Update

Published Mon, Jul 15, 2024

Scribe has released major updates to ScML and the Digital Hub. Dozens of new paragraph and character styles have been added to help format your publications, and the Digital Hub has added features to improve the accessibility of e-books produced.

Configuring/Installing Updates

All Well-Formed Document Workflow (WFDW) users will need to update their local resources in order to use the new ScML styles.

Update SAI Template Files

For those who work in Word to scribe or edit manuscripts,

Go to Word Template and click Download Archive.
Unzip scml-word-templates.zip and replace your copies of scr-word-template.dot and scr-scmllist.txt.

Note: You can check the current location of these files by opening the SAI User Settings.

Update Scribe Tools for InDesign

For designers and typesetters,

Go to ScML and sam DTDs and click Download Archive.
Unzip scml-dtds.zip and replace the sam.dtd file used by Scribe Tools. You can also use the “Set/Reset sam.dtd Location” tool to point to the new DTD file.

Scribe’s Default CSS

For e-book developers,

Go to E-book CSS.
Click Download.

Scribe’s default CSS includes rendering settings for all of the new styles. If you work with a customized CSS, the new styles should be incorporated into your file.

ScML Style Updates

New Styles

A complete list of all ScML Styles and descriptions can be found on the ScML page.

psep: A special p style used to indicate a p paragraph with space above that is visually distinct from p but does not represent a context or section break as psec does.
qaspk: Character style to be used in conjunction with qu and ans styles
tocemb: Character style for chapter number used in any toc line.
New Bulleted List Sublevel Styles: bl2, bl2f, bl2l, bl2p, bl2s, bl3, bl3f, bl3l, bl3p, bl3s, bl4, bl4f, bl4l, bl4p, bl4s, bl5, bl5f, bl5l, bl5p, bl5s
New Articulation/Sublevel Paragraph Styles: ansl, bkau2, bqcon, bxahaft, bxbhaft, ed (eds is now a standalone), edf, edl, epo, epsll, eqf, eql, eqo, eqs, exahaft, exbhaft, exo, hdaft, hd1, hd1aft, sb1aft, sbblp
New Table Styles: td1, td1p, td2, td2p, td3, td3p
New Blockquote Tails: bxbqt, ntbqt, sbbqt
New Formatting Variant Character Styles: chemb-i, hemb-i, xbr-i, xbr-b
New Accessibility Character Styles: freeform, redacted

Removed Styles

The typesetting-only sectop and secbot styles have been removed. If spacing variations are needed for sec paragraphs appearing at the top or bottom of the printed page, use sec-alttop and sec-altbot.
call has been removed. Use the appropriate quot style instead for pull quote paragraphs.

New Structure Tag

longdescription: This new block element will be used in future procedures and tools to help organize and link long descriptions to their associated images/figures.

Elements and Styles for Custom Workflows

There are a few styles with special functions that are intended for advanced users with custom workflows. Do not use these styles unless you have been advised by your Scribe contact.

format: ScML DTD only for ScML2PDF service improvements.
mconstruct: Character style used for MathML markup placed in Word as live text. This is not a valid character style in .scml files, where the contents are converted to markup. Converting to sam or ScML will convert the text to XML markup.
mml:math: Element used in .sam and .scml files only that allows MathML elements to be included as child elements while still producing a DTD-valid ScML file.
hidden: Character style for metadata to round-trip through the workflow. In InDesign, a condition is applied to hide this content.

Accessibility Improvements

Scribe continues to improve the accessibility of e-books produced in the WFDW, with an eye toward the European Accessibility Act and developing accessibility standards throughout the industry.

If access modes are selected, this will automatically be added as a sufficient access mode, allowing you to use the sufficient access mode for an additional set of options. More information about how to choose appropriate options can be found on our new Metadata page.
The deprecated caption and printPageNumbers accessibility features have been removed as options in the Digital Hub.
The ability to produce ePub 2 has been removed from the Digital Hub. Accessibility specifications are based on the ePub 3 file format.
If the automatic aria-labelledby attribute applied to sidebars results in aria-labels that are not unique, you can specify the aria-label for a sidebar in the .scml file to hardcode the label for the ePub: <sidebar aria-label="Pro Tip 1.">. This is useful for books where sidebars have repeated head text and nothing to uniquely identify it. Accessibility best practices require that sidebars all have unique labels.
The Digital Hub has many other improvements to the accessibility of the HTML produced, requiring no additional user input.

While the Digital Hub handles a large variety of accessibility concerns automatically, understanding the philosophy underpinning accessibility has never been more important. To that end, Scribe has authored several new documentation pages to help you deepen and refresh your understanding of accessibility. These pages appear on our documentation pages in the sidebar under Accessibility and E-book.

Additional Routine Fixes

New file warnings, improved index linking, articulation improvements, and a number of bug fixes round out this update.

Improvements to Scribe Book Production Services

Scribe also continues to research and make incremental improvements to our book production services.

In addition to the accessibility fixes affecting all books, we have made many updates to our Bible services to offer significantly improved accessibility for e-book Bibles produced by Scribe.

Routine updates have improved the quality and flexibility of our ScML2PDF output.

Finally, we are exploring the use of MathML for select e-books produced by Scribe.

Contact Scribe today to inquire about these services.