@type, <keydef>, and multimedia elements

[Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>]

This cropped up in Chris Nitchie's review of the stage three proposal 
for adding multimedia elements to the base:

"@type is similarly tricky when keys are involved. TheÂ@type on a media 
element is explicitly a MIME type. That's not necessarily the case 
forÂ@type on topicref/keydef; the definition ofÂ@type there is more 
loosely defined. I hesitate to say we should have language about how to 
interpret keydefÂ@types in the context of media elements because it's 
going to be nightmarishly complex and anything we say will probably be 
incomplete. But it's something I though of. (As an implementor, I'd run 
any non-MIME-typeÂ@type through whatever library I was using to 
interpret filename extensions, but I'm not sure how to say that in 
Standardese.)"

--
Best,
Kris

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
OASIS Distinguished Contributor
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting LLC
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)