GuideML - REFERENCES Tag
Created | Updated Mar 13, 2012
The <REFERENCES> tag is used to add links to the Article Data box without having to put those links into the body of the entry.
Syntax and Usage
<REFERENCES>...links list...</REFERENCES>
The <REFERENCES> section contains link information to add to the Article Data box.
The ...links list... between the <REFERENCES> tags is examined for <LINK> tags, and those links are then added to the Article Data box for that entry.
The way the text between the <REFERENCES> tags is parsed is different to the body text of an entry.
For <LINK H2G2> and <LINK BIO> tags, the text between the <LINK> tags is ignored, and the text used for the links in the Article Data box is the entry title and user name respectively. Because of this it is perfectly acceptable to use an empty version of the <LINK H2G2> and <LINK BIO> tags, as in the examples below. It doesn't matter if you use the normal paired <LINK>...</LINK> syntax, but the empty version saves typing text that will be ignored anyway.
However the text shown for <LINK HREF> tags is that between the <LINK> tags, as it is inefficient to have to fetch the title of an external web page. You should not use empty <LINK HREF> tags in the <REFERENCES> block.
If you want to add more than one link, then simply put them one after the other in the <REFERENCES> block.
The <REFERENCES> block should be placed after the </BODY> tag but before the </GUIDE> tag.
Known Issues
Known issues with the <REFERENCES> tag are exactly the same as those for the <LINK> tag, as the same processing is done on the <REFERENCES> section as for the main body of the text.
Example One
The following code puts a link to the h2g2 'Preparing a Chicken' entry in the Article Data box. The text used for the link is the entry's title.
<REFERENCES> <LINK H2G2="A260281"/> </REFERENCES>Example Two
The following code puts a link to a member's Personal Space in the Article Data box (in this case the page of our GuideML Guru, Bruce). The text used for the link is the member's name.
<REFERENCES> <LINK BIO="U25551"/> </REFERENCES>Example Three
The following code puts a link to an external website in the Article Data box (in this case www.bbc.co.uk). The text used for the link is the given between the <LINK> tags.
<REFERENCES> <LINK HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk/">The BBCi website</LINK> </REFERENCES>