MIME type for DITA - RFC, redux

["Don Day (LbW)" <donday@learningbywrote.com>]

Hello, Jamie. I'd like to request a new look at the subject topic, originated here:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200806/msg00008.html.

Whatever previous email I had with you has been lost with my retirement from IBM, although I don't recall that much progress had been made as of that time. A search on the dita list does not bring up any response shared here either, so let's try again. Requoting from that message,

The OASIS DITA Technical Committee today approved the following MIME Type RFC for carrying forward to IANA:

(See attached file: DITAMIMETypeRFC.txt)

Please let the Technical Committee know if we should supply anything else in support of the RFC process.

--
Don Day,
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee

                  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 collection objects with 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 collection and 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
   content and collection objects 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 consisting of
         text with no embedded markup.  The text of the full title
         in an object may be ellided to a meaningful fragment.

      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 the parameters are optional, the use of the charset and
      format parameters is strongly encouraged.  Knowledge of the
      character set and base vocabulary will be essential for correct
      processing of DITA objects in most applications.

   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.

      Content management systems and other systems may also use the
      DITA media type to allow management and identification of DITA
      objects without the need to open and process each object.

   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 content objects
         of vocabularies specialized from the base DITA topic
         vocabulary), ".ditamap" (for collection objects of the
         vocabularies specialized from the base DITA map vocabulary),
         and ".ditaval" (for objects of the DITA conditional values
         vocabulary).

         The ".xml" extension is used sometimes in place of the
         ".dita" extension but the latter is preferred.

      Macintosh file type code(s):
         TEXT as with other XML documents.

   Persons & email addresses to contact for further information:
      Jamie Clark (OASIS staff liason) <jamie.clark@oasis-open.org>

   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 1.1 Language Specification," 1 August 2007.
               Available at
               <http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/archspec/archspec.html>

   [DITVOCAB]  Priestley, M., Anderson, R. and Hackos, J., "OASIS DITA
               Version 1.1 Architectural Specification," 1 August 2007. 
               Available at
               <http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/langspec/ditaref-type.html>

   [URI]       Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
               Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 3986,
               January 2005.

   [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.

   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
   included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
   document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
   the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
   Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
   developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
   copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
   followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
   English.

   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
   revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
   TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
   BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.