Some users want to be able annotate any node with a bit of formatted text (HTML, RTF, whatever). In the current ADL 1.5 specification, an annotation is just a name/value pair, so there would be nowhere to store the mime type of an annotation's value.
To allow the mime type to be specified, an annotation could become more like a DV_PARSEABLE. So, instead of this:
["design note"] = <"this is a design note on intelerance">
It would become this:
["design note"] = <
formalism = <"text/html">
value = <"this is a design note on intelerance">
>
As with DV_PARSABLE, the formalism wouldn't be restricted to mime types:
formalism : String 1 – name of the formalism, e.g. "GLIF 1.0", "proforma" etc.
I'm more convinced about putting in a formalism marker by the above examples.
I'd support this approach