I think this looks good. Some
questions and suggestions in blue below.
-Jeff
The 'application/dita+xml' Media Type
Status of this Memo
This memo provides
information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet
standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet
Society (2008). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document defines the
'application/dita+xml' MIME media type
for objects conforming to
DITA markup vocabularies.
1. Introduction
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an OASIS
standard that provides a
XML-based architecture for content
objects and for collections
of references to content objects.
Because of their granularity,
DITA content objects are well-suited
for transfer over the
Internet and intranets. Because DITA defines
special processing rules for
content objects including fallback
processing and
placeholder-based transclusion, adopters benefit if
these objects can be routed
to DITA-aware processors.
This document registers a new
MIME media type for use with
DITA objects and collections defined
by the OASIS DITA Standard.
It does not define the DITA
standard, which is maintained at OASIS.
The DITA MIME type follows
the standard convention established for
XML media types by [XMLMIME].
This document was prepared by
the DITA OASIS Technical Committee.
Please provide comments to
the Technical Committee using
<http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=dita>
Archives of comments to the
Technical Committee are provided at
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita-comment/>
2. Registration of MIME media type
application/dita+xml
Type
name:
application
Subtype
name:
dita+xml
Required
parameters: none
Optional parameters:
charset
The parameter for the "application/xml" media type
standardized by [XMLMIME].
format
The identifier for the base vocabulary of the object.
type
The identifier for the specialized vocabulary of the root
element of the object.
title
A distinguishing name or heading for the object.
The format,
type, and title parameters correspond to the format
and type
attributes of the DITA map and to the title element of
the DITA
map and topic. (See [DITVOCAB].)
While all of the parameters are OPTIONAL, the use of charset and
format are
STRONGLY ENCOURAGED.
[The DITA 1.0 Specification is referenced,
but there was no title element
for DITA maps in DITA 1.0.]
[Should the title parameter omit
additional markup, that is, should it be text only?]
[Should we state that the length of the
title parameter MAY be limited by truncating
the title value at some convenient
length?]
Encoding considerations:
Because of
its XML representation, DITA has the same encoding
considerations as XML. (See [XMLMIME].)
Security considerations:
By virtue
of being XML, DITA has the same fundamental security
considerations as XML. (See [XMLMIME].)
In addition, specialized DITA vocabularies could have semantics
and
processing expectations that (if acted on) posed security
issues. The base DITA vocabularies and core specialized
vocabularies, however, do not pose such issues, and DITA
processors
are not required to recognize specialized semantics.
Interoperability
considerations:
DITA
specifies an architecture for extending a general
vocabulary
with a specialized vocabulary, a set of base
vocabularies (identifiable with the format parameter), and a set
of core
vocabularies specialized according to the rules of the
architecture. (See [DITARCH].)
A new
vocabulary that follows the rules of the DITA architecture
in
specializing from a DITA base or specialized vocabulary
conforms to
the DITA standard.
DITA
objects are instances of conformant DITA
vocabularies. Because such objects can be generalized to less
specialized
vocabularies (including the base vocabulary), a DITA
object is
processable by any DITA-aware processor that, at a
minimum,
understands the base vocabulary.
Published specification:
DITA is
defined by an OASIS specification maintained by the DITA
OASIS
Technical Committee (<http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita>).
Applications that use this
media type:
This type
is being registered to allow for deployment of DITA on
the
Internet as well as on intranets as a first-class XML
application
so DITA objects can be routed efficiently to
DITA-aware
processors.
The DITA
media type MAY also be used by content management
and other
systems to allow searching for and identification of specific
DITA
documents without the need to open and process each document.
Additional information:
Magic
number(s):
As XML documents, DITA objects have no initial byte sequence.
A DITA object has a root element with a DITAArchVersion
attribute in the
<http://dita.oasis-open.org/architecture/2005/DITAArchVersion>
namespace or has a <dita> root element that contains a list
of DITA objects that have the DITAArchVersion attribute and
specialize the topic base vocabulary.
File
extension(s):
Typical file extensions include ".dita" (for objects of
vocabularies specialized from the base DITA topic
vocabulary), ".ditamap" (for objects of the vocabularies
specialized from the base DITA map vocabulary), and
".ditaval" (for objects of the DITA values vocabulary). The
“.xml” extension MAY be used in place of the “.dita”
extension,
but the use of “.dita” is preferred.
Macintosh
file type code(s):
TEXT as with other XML documents.
Persons & email addresses
to contact for further information:
Jeff Ogden <jogden@ptc.com>
Erik Hennum <ehennum@us.ibm.com>
Intended
usage:
COMMON
Restrictions on
usage: NONE
Author / Change
controller: OASIS DITA Technical Committee
3. References
[DITARCH] Priestley,
M., Anderson, R. and Hackos, J., "OASIS DITA
Version 1.0 Language Specification," 1 August 2007.
Available at
<http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/langspec/ditaref-type.html>
[DITVOCAB] Priestley, M.,
Anderson, R. and Hackos, J., "OASIS DITA
Version 1.0 Architectural Specification," 1 August 2007.
Available at
<http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/archspec/archspec.html>
[Should these two references be to the
DITA 1.1 Specification rather than
the DITA 1.0 specification? The DITA
1.1 spec includes ditaval and a map
title element.]
[XMLMIME] Murata, M.,
St.Laurent, S. and D. Kohn, "XML Media
Types", RFC 3023, January 2001.
4. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet
Society (2008). All Rights Reserved.
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