type attribute content model

[Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

  Section 3.1.1, '"type" Attribute' states:

[...]
  Content constructs MAY have a "type" attribute, whose value indicates
  the media type of the content.  When present, this attribute's value
  MUST be a media type [RFC2045].  If this attribute is not present,
  processors MUST behave as if it were present with a value of "text/
  plain".
[...]

and section 3.4.2, '"type" Attribute' states:

[...]
   Link constructs MUST have a type attribute, whose value MUST be a
   media type [RFC2045].
[...]

This reference to RFC 2045 for the definition of "media type" is rather
vague as RFC 2045 uses the term to refer to top-level types such as
"text" and "application", to combinations of top-level types and
sub-types such as "text/css" and "application/rdf+xml" and to the value
of the Content-Type header which could for example be something like
"application/xhtml+xml;profile='http://example.org/basic10.dtd'". A
number of questions arise from this fact, see e.g.

  http://www.w3.org/mid/40ccdc4d.97400945@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What is the intent here?