question about glossaries and russian abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this or if the mailing list is better, I'll check and send it on there if that's the usual process.

I should note up front I have no skills in Russian or any related language, or epub construction, so the following is mostly guesswork and googling.

The book has a "notes and explanations" section that explains various names and terms that it uses:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-reed/ten-days-that-shook-the-world/text/notes-and-explanations

The first part of the question, is whether this can be marked up as a glossary? The information given in the manual, seems to be talking mostly about a seperate file, while the links it gives to the related EPUB standard, talks about marking up definitions that occur within the text itself and then creating the extra file as a kind of index for software to use.

https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.0.0/7-high-level-structural-patterns#7.11

Also some of the definitions are given in passing via running text e.g.:

Russian meetings and conventions are organised after the continental model rather than our own. The first action is usually the election of officers and the presidium.

The presidium is a presiding committee, composed of representatives of the groups and political factions represented in the assembly, in proportion to their numbers.

Should these be marked up as definitions? As well as the things in that form in this section, there's probably other terms introduced throughout the book that could be similarly re-used as marked up definitions, though that might be more an editorial change, than just marking up a section explicitly designed for giving definitions.

Most parts of the notes section have a more straightforward, dictionary like, list format for defining organisations that get mentioned but possibly only some need to be indexed, e.g. "Trade Unions" is a fairly common concept, even if he goes on to talk about a very specific group. Then there's russian terms like "Zemstvos". Possibly a second glossary just for Russian words could be added? Though I'm not sure if the definitions could just be taken from Wiktionary or need to come from the current book.

https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.0.0/7-high-level-structural-patterns#7.11

The second part, is about the items it defines, some of which it notes as abbreviations/acronyms/initialisms (though I'm not totally sure on exactly which each term would fall into, just as I guess you need to understand the English language to some degree and the common usage to know if UFO or NASA is an acronym or initialism).

They have a bunch of gray area items, which is complicated by the cross-language nature of the terms e.g.

Called Essaires from the initials of their name.

Trudoviki (Labour Group)

Tsay-ee-kah. All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. So called from the initials of its name.

This one seems to be a phonetic spelling, for English readers, of a Russian/Cyrillic initialism Ц.И.К.

Tsentroflot. “Centre-Fleet”⁠—the Central Fleet Committee.

Vikzhel. All-Russian Central Committee of the Railway Workers’ Union. So called from the initials of its name.

So any guidance on markup for these in general or specific cases would be welcome.

standardebooks / john-reed_ten-days-that-shook-the-world

question about glossaries and russian abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms #13