The @format attribute
The following values for @format have special processing implications:
- dita
 - The destination uses DITA topic markup or markup specialized from a DITA topic. Unless otherwise specified, when @format is set to "dita", the value for the @type attribute will be treated as "topic".
 - ditamap
 - The linked-to resource is a DITA map. It represents the referenced
                  hierarchy at the current point in the referencing map.
                  References to other maps can occur at any point in a map, but
                  because relationship tables are only valid as children of a map,
                  referenced relationship tables are treated as children of the
                  referencing map. 
                  
note
If a <topicref> element that references a map contains child <topicref> elements, the processing behavior regarding the child <topicref> elements is undefined. - (no value)
 - The processing default is used. The
                  processing default for the @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:
- html
 - The format of the linked-to resource is HTML or XHTML.
 - The format of the linked-to resource is PDF.
 - txt
 - The format of the linked-to resource is a text file.