Will XML Ever Make Good on its Promise?

[dave.cantrell@gunter.af.mil]

http://www.idg.net/crd_idgsearch_1.html?url=http://comment.cio.com/soundoff/
053101.html

This article makes a very good point, one which I've been wondering for a
while now. I was looking over the Dublin Core usage guide [1], and couldn't
help but shudder when I saw the following example under the Format section
[2]:

  Title="Dublin Core icon"
  Identifier="http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core/images/dc2.gif";
  Type="image"
  Format="image/gif 4kB"

  Subject="Saturn"
  Type="image"
  Format="image/gif 640 x 512 pixels"
  Identifier="http://www.not.iac.es/newwww/photos/images/satnot.gif";

Now, if we are dealing with two GIF files here, why does one format specify
file size and one specify dimensions, but neither specifies both?

I applaud the desire to allow freedom in specifying metadata, but doing
things this way seems to invite problems of the sort XML is trying to avoid.

Since Dublin Core is not itself an XML effort, I guess I can understand this
lax approach. And I also don't necessarily favor being anal-retentive about
the whole thing and trying to come up with an element for every single
possible permutation. I was teaching database concepts to a co-worker today,
and he was trying to build a table that contained a discrete row for every
possible sentence in a set of instructions. Oy...

But I do favor consistency. If you define an element, I believe you should
define its boundary conditions as well, e.g. "Any format specifying
'image/*' (i.e. 'image/gif', etc) will specifiy it's file size (in bytes)
and dimensions (as width by height)."

Thoughts?

[1] http://www.dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/generic.shtml
[2]
http://www.dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/generic.shtml#form
at