Foreign Annotation

It may happen that you want to include annotations inside your FoLiA that are not actually in FoLiA, but in some other XML format. Though this is very much discouraged, even more so if FoLiA has proper facilities for your annotation needs, it may in rare cases be needed; for example if FoLiA has no support yet for a particular advanced type of annotation or if another scheme has already been in use and conversion is not an option. It is most suitable for attaching further data to arbitrary elements, though for metadata Submetadata should always be considered first!

The higher-order annotation element <foreign-data> can be used to accomplish foreign annotations. It acts as a container in which annotation must be in a different XML namespace, rather than the FoLiA namespace. The element is allowed almost anywhere: inside structure annotation, inside inline/span annotation, inside other higher annotation elements, but not inside text content (<t>), phonetic content (<ph>) or text-markup (<t-*>).

In the following example we attach an annotation in a custom fictitious XML format and namespace to a FoLiA word:

<w xml:id="w.1">
   <t>Hello</t>
   <foreign-data xmlns:myformat="http://my.com/custom/format">
      <myformat:myannotation myattribute="myvalue" />
   </foreign-data>
</w>

Foreign annotation does not need to be declared and, as can not be emphasised enough, should really only be used when no proper FoLiA solution exists, and even in such cases it is preferable to contact the FoLiA developers and see if FoLiA can be extended for your needs.. Be aware that generic FoLiA tools and libraries will usually not process the contents of foreign-data, as it can contain anything by definition, and special-purpose tools need to be written for your specific use case if you use foreign-data.