I have been talking to other government agencies who are studying the metadata standard for the purpose of defining some type of simple, generic FGDC compliant exchange format standard, and I think that any such beast would feature direct internal referencing of metadata elements by FGDC number. This is especially important when implementing section 4 of the standard, which is hierarchically based, and which contains many elements which are implemented only under certain conditions. Rupert Essinger's comments on the advantages of managing the structures through a user interface are accurate, but only when everyone is working within the same applications environment. The DTD is an attempt tp capture the production rules in a way that an SGML viewer might be able to parse and present it flexibly. We are using a new server package to administer the list, called Majordomo, which facilitates most of the capabilities of the the other software.
Some commands are different.
You will have a message returned, informing you of all appropriate commands to manipulate the list. The original subscriber list has been transferred to the FGDC and reformatted for Majordomo, so all current members should get this message. Please read the return message from the server carefully to find the information relevant to you. I am aware of the Federal Data Product keyword matrix which is a good start, but needs to be expanded. Any help on this wouldbe appreciated.