pdfurirdfmedia-type

URI for a custom media-type?

I need to describe in RDF documents that are electronically signed PDFs versus documents that are normal PDFs. The list of IANA media types only contains application/pdf media type.

What is the good practice to use a custom URI to identify electronically signed PDF from a normal PDF?

I am reading that a new media-type could be defined starting with x-; can I simply define http://example.com/media-type/application/x-signed-pdf and use this URI as a value for a dcterms:format (or myontology:mediaType) property in RDF?

Solution

  • We actually chose to :

    1. Have 2 distinct metadata properties : the "true" media-type, relying only on IANA-registered media types, and an application-specific "media-type";
    2. For the "true" media type we rely exclusively on registered IANA values, and for the "custom" type we define our own list of URIs as possible values;

    So, we can rely on the "true" media-type property to do proper content negociation, and use the "custom" property for application-specific behavior.