How metadata are processed

The diagram below shows the processing of a fairly complex metadata record from the editing process (on the left) through formal parsing, syntactical analysis, and generation of human- and computer-readable reports (on the right). Boxes indicate files; their labels show the format of those files. Arrows indicate the processing done by specific computer programs. Names of the programs link to the web pages in which those programs are documented.

Diagram: poorly-formatted text may be passed through cns to Tkme
or another editor, and thence to mp, which generates an error listing,
outline- and FAQ-style HTML, XML, SGML, NASA DIF, and indented text.
The error report can be re-expressed in HTML using err2html.

Indented text Extensible Markup Language Standard Generalized Markup Language Error report (plain text) Outline-style HTML Frequently-asked Questions (HTML) Standard Generalized Markup Language Extensible Markup Language NASA's Directory Interchange Format Indented text (same as the input format) Tabular error report (HTML) Text not properly indented Chew 'n Spit program Tkme Metadata Editor Spatial Metadata Management System, for example Metadata Parser Error to HTML processor