@format
attributeThe @format
attribute identifies the format of
the resource that is referenced.
If no value is
specified, but the attribute is specified on an ancestor
within a map or within the related-links section, the value
will cascade from the closest ancestor.
The following values for @format
have special processing
implications:
@format
is set to "dita", the value for
the @type
attribute will be treated as
"topic".<topicref>
element that references a map contains child
<topicref>
elements, the processing
behavior regarding the child <topicref>
elements is undefined.@format
attribute is
determined by inspecting the value of the @href
attribute. If the @href
attribute specifies a
file extension, the processing default for the
@format
attribute is that extension, after
conversion to lower-case and with no leading period. The only
exception to this is if the extension is "xml", in which case
the default format is "dita". If there is no extension, but the
@href
value is an absolute URI whose
scheme is "http" or "https", then the processing default is
"html". In all other cases where no extension is available, the
processing default is "dita".If the
actual format of the referenced content differs from the
effective value of the @format
attribute,
and a processor is capable of identifying such cases, it
MAY recover gracefully and treat the content
as its actual format, but SHOULD also issue a
message.
For other formats, using the file extension without the "." character
typically represents the format. For example, the following values are
all possible values for @format
: