Documenthead

Documenthead is a term used in document engineering to describe the metadata header that precedes the main content of a document. It collects information about the document itself—its identity, provenance, and how it should be processed—separating metadata from the body. The phrase is sometimes used interchangeably with front matter or header, depending on the system.

In practice, a documenthead typically contains fields such as title, author, date, version, language, license, keywords, description, and dependencies; and may include processing instructions, build settings, or links to external resources. The exact schema varies by project, and many implementations use a structured format such as YAML front matter, JSON, or TOML. In traditional HTML, the analogous concept is the head element, which contains metadata and resources; however, documenthead as a separate block is more common in plain-text or markup workflows that separate metadata from the main content.

Uses of documenthead include organizational metadata, publishing pipelines, static site generation, scholarly articles, documentation, eBooks, and configuration for renderers or indexers. It enables automated tooling to render, validate, or index content while preserving the original document content unchanged.

Relation to standards and tooling: There is no universal standard named documenthead; it is a pragmatic pattern. Many ecosystems standardize its format via front matter conventions, typically YAML or TOML, or via embedded metadata in formats such as XML or JSON. Tools parse, validate, and merge documenthead data with content during rendering or indexing.

See also: front matter, metadata, header, YAML, TOML, JSON-LD, HTML head.