Metadata¶

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This guide documents the course and document information configured through \unipdsetup. Metadata is used by the cover, running page style, and other shared components.

Course setup¶

Place \unipdsetup in main.tex after \documentclass and before \begin{document}:

\documentclass[italian]{unipd-notes}

\unipdsetup{
  course = {Fondamenti di Informatica},
  short-course = {Fondamenti di Informatica},
  course-code = {IN0000225},
  channel = {B},
  professor = {Prof. Mario Rossi},
  academic-year = {2026--2027},
  degree-year = {1},
  semester = {1},
  document-type = {Appunti delle lezioni},
  author = {Ada Lovelace},
  date = {3 agosto 2026},
  version = {0.1.0}
}

This setup illustrates the metadata format. Verify the title, course code, channel, instructor, author, date, and version for your edition. Select italian or english as a class option; shared labels follow that selection.

Course-specific fields¶

Field	Purpose
`course`	Official full course name
`short-course`	Short title used where space is limited
`course-code`	Official University of Padua course or activity code
`channel`	Teaching channel for the documented course edition
`professor`	Instructor for the documented course edition
`academic-year`	Academic year in `YYYY--YYYY` form
`degree-year`	Degree year: `1`, `2`, or `3`
`semester`	Semester `1` or `2`
`document-type`	Type of material, such as `Appunti delle lezioni` or `Lecture notes`
`author`	Author or authors of the notes
`date`	Start date of the course, stored explicitly in the document source
`version`	Revision identifier, starting from `0.1.0` for new notes

Set author explicitly. Its shared default is empty to prevent accidental attribution; the cover omits the author field when it is empty. Repository validation rejects empty or placeholder authors in course documents.

Write each course metadata entry on its own line with a braced value, as shown above. The repository's source readers expect this format; arbitrary macros or a compact one-line setup may compile but are not reliably read by validation and README generation.

Repository course validation requires course, academic-year, degree-year, semester, author, date, and version. The course name and version must be non-empty; the author must also be non-placeholder. The degree year must match the parent directory, and the academic year must match the repository cohort (2026--2027, 2027--2028, or 2028--2029).

short-course, course-code, channel, professor, and document-type are optional at the metadata layer and may be omitted when they are unknown or not applicable. The course-creation tool intentionally requires short-course and professor when scaffolding a new course so the initial document is complete.

When available, write course-code as the canonical uppercase University activity code: two to four letters followed by seven or eight digits, such as IN0000225 or IN10100190. Write channel as a concise uppercase identifier such as B, 1, or A-K. Repository validation checks the format of non-empty values but does not require either optional field. Both values appear on the cover and in the generated section of the course README when supplied.

Set date to the displayed localized course-start text, or use date = {} explicitly to hide it. The field has no automatic value because it represents the course schedule rather than document build time. The course generator provides ISO-date input and localization. Blank optional fields are not displayed on the cover.

Shared defaults¶

The metadata system defines language-dependent institutional defaults:

Field	Italian	English
`university`	Università degli Studi di Padova	University of Padua
`degree`	Corso di laurea triennale in Ingegneria informatica	Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
`repository`	Computer Engineering — UniPD	Computer Engineering — UniPD
`license`	CC BY-SA 4.0	CC BY-SA 4.0
`unofficial-notice`	Materiale didattico non ufficiale, non approvato né pubblicato dall'Università degli Studi di Padova.	Unofficial teaching material, not approved or published by the University of Padua.

For this cohort's course notes, keep these institutional and licensing defaults. Do not remove the unofficial notice or change the license as a formatting choice.

Using metadata¶

Retrieve a value inside the document with:

\unipdmetadata{course}

Use \unipdifmetadata when content should appear only if a field is present:

\unipdifmetadata{professor}
  {Docente: \unipdmetadata{professor}}
  {Docente non specificato}

\unipdheadcourse returns short-course when available and otherwise falls back to course.

Keep metadata in main.tex; do not repeat it in section files. Keep the academic year aligned with the archive's fixed degree-year mapping. Update the channel, professor, and course start date when documenting a different course edition; update the version when publishing a revision of the notes. The validator requires a non-empty version but does not enforce semantic versioning or increment it automatically.

Continue with Writing notes for content conventions or Building documents to regenerate and review the PDF.