RE: [dita] MIME type for DITA

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.

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

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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

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BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION

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From: Erik Hennum [mailto:ehennum@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 9:35 AM
To: dita@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita] MIME type for DITA - RFC

Esteemed TC:

I've attached (or appended depending on the whims of the mail agents) a draft RFC of a MIME type for DITA based on Jeff's approach as discussed in previous meetings and this note:

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/200804/msg00095.html

Jeff, I've taken the liberty of listing you as one of the contacts for more information.

While an RFC (Request For Comment) is not strictly required from a standards body such as an OASIS TC, it is encouraged according to the defined process:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4289.txt

For the current list of accepted XML MIME types, see the application/*+xml entries:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/application/

Thanks,

Erik Hennum
ehennum@us.ibm.com

(See attached file: DITAMIMETypeRFC.txt)

dita message