[tei-council] @mimeType content

[Martin Holmes]

Apologies if we've discussed this before; I see two tickets on related 
issues, but nothing seems to address this specific concern. Both Hugh 
and Syd may have clear ideas on this, since I seem to recall it was 
discussed on TEI-SOM:

@mimeType (att.internetMedia) is defined thusly:

-------
mimeType	(MIME media type) specifies the applicable multimedia internet 
mail extension (MIME) media type
Status 	Optional
Datatype 	1–∞ occurrences of

data.word

separated by whitespace
Values 	The value should be a valid MIME media type
-------

The "1–∞ occurrences" suggests that you could have multiple instances of 
mime types, separated by spaces, but the Values description says not.

The example we have for it looks like this:

<ref
   mimeType="application/tei+xml; charset=UTF-8"
 
target="http://tei.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/tei/trunk/P5/Source/guidelines-en.xml"/>

In this case, the space (along with the preceding semi-colon) separates 
the actual mime type from the character encoding; in fact the whole 
content of the @mimeType attribute is apparently part of a single "mime 
type" definition, rather than two, separated by spaces.

Should we be more explicit in saying, for instance:

Although multiple data.words may be supplied in this attribute, the 
intention is that they form part of a _single_ mime type, and that the 
spaces separate components of that single mime type, rather than that 
multiple mime types could be supplied inside the attribute.

Or have I understood this wrongly, and in fact it is possible to supply 
more than one mime type, thusly:

mimeType="text/xml application/tei+xml"

leaving it up to a processor to decide the function of the space 
delimiter in any given implementation?

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
(mholmes at uvic.ca)