Cross-walk between HTML and CDA Narrative

Nov 20, 2012

As a followup to yesterday’s post about converting from html to CDA narrative, the following table summarises the differences between HTML and CDA narrative: |HTML|CDA|Comments |a|linkHtml| |abbr|–| |acronym|–| |address|–| |applet|–| |area|–|No direct equivalent, though there is RegionOfInterest which is similar |b|<content styleCode=”Bold”| |base|–|CDA document itself is the base |basefont|–| |bdo|–| |big|–| |blockquote|–| |body|n/a| |br|br| |button|–| |caption|caption| |center|–| |cite|–| |code|–|NEHTA defines styleCode=”xPre” for this |col|col| |colgroup|colgroup| |dd|–| |del|<content revised=”delete”| |dfn|–| |dir|–| |div|–| |dl|–| |dt|–| |em|<content styleCode=”Emphasis”| |fieldset|–| |font|–| |form|–|No forms in CDA documents |frame|–| |frameset|–| |h1|–|Headings are supposed to be subsumed into nested section titles. |h2|–| |h3|–| |h4|–| |h5|–| |h6|–| |head|–| |hr|–| |html|–| |i|<content styleCode=”Italics”| |iframe|–| |img|renderMultiMedia| |input|–| |ins|<content revised=”insert”| |isindex|–| |kbd|–| |label|–| |legend|–| |li|item| |link|–| |map|–| |menu|–| |meta|–| |noframes|–| |noscript|–| |object|–| |ol|list listType=”ordered”| |optgroup|–| |option|–| |p|paragraph| |param|–| |pre|–|NEHTA defines styleCode=”xPre” for this |q|–| |s|–| |samp|–| |script|–| |select|–| |small|–| |span|content| |strike|–| |strong|–| |style|–|Can’t define styles in CDA |sub|sub| |sup|sup| |table|table| |tbody|tbody| |td|td| |textarea|–| |tfoot|tfoot| |th|th| |thead|thead| |title|–| |tr|tr| |tt|–| |u|<content styleCode=”Underline”| |ul|list listType=”unordered”| |var|–| ||footnote| No equivalent to foot notes in html (unfortunately!) ||footnoteRef|

Notes:

  • Most CDA elements have the attributes id, styleCode, and language on them. This is a much shorter list than the HTML equivalents. The available styles are much restricted.
  • NEHTA has defined a few additional styles as described in the Rendering Specification
  • HTML element list is fromhttp://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html