XML vs. HTML metadata tags?

[Doran, Kelly]

<lurk mode: off>

Web4libbers:

Has anyone dealt with the issue of using Extensible Markup Language
(XML) syntax for metadata rather than using the standard HTML <METADATA>
tags? This would include things like Netscape's Meta Content Framework
(MCF) using XML, Microsoft's XML-Data, PICS, Dublin Core using XML, etc.
I understand that many of the "big players", including Microsoft,
Netscape, and W3C met in the last week of August to hammer out a
Resource Description Framework (RDF) specification based on a
combination of the above standards, but I haven't heard anything about
the outcome.

I'm involved in a project to index my company's intranet with standard
metadata. One of our project goals is to build a "Metadata Generator"
for page owners-- fill out a form and have it do the markup for you. Up
to now, we planned to use standard HTML metadata tags and a variation of
the Warwick framework.

However, the metadata will be used to improve search results from a
Verity search engine. Our search-engine-master (master engineer?) tells
us that using XML syntax would make it MUCH easier to use Verity to
search specific metadata fields (author, subject, etc.). We'd rather use
syntax that will work with the search engine with a minimum of tweaking,
but we don't want to lock in XML if it's only going to be a nine-day
wonder.

Experience, opinions, suggestions and warnings are all welcome; so are
general comments about metadata. If more than a few people are
interested I will summarize for the list.

Thanks!!

Kelly Doran,
Weyerhaeuser Co. Technical Library
dorank at wdni.com