On Sunday, January 30, 2005, at 10:25 AM, Tim Bray wrote:
Given that we're very unlikely to change what's acceptable in the various @type attributes, perhaps one of the persons concerned about this issue could write a proposal to change the name of one or more of these attributes.** @type **
The passages in 3.1.1 and 4.15.1 and 4.6.3 around @type are not consistent.
In 3.1.1 media types are not an option:
[[[
Note that MIME media types [RFC2045] are not acceptable values for the "type" attribute.
]]]
in 4.15.1 and 4.6.3 they are stated as an option.
On re-reading, I'm pretty sure that 3.1.1 could be struck without any loss of meaning to the spec, giving the processing model outlined in 4.15.3. And 4.15.3 could perhaps be moved up to where 3.1.1 is if we wanted to retain the notion of a construct for type.
I'm definitely -1 on losing 3.1.1, the text construct is a hard-won compromise and seems to cause no-one any pain. Several people have pointed out that having 3 diffferent "type" attributes, meaning different things, is a source of confusion. -Tim
