This is likely to be useful in recording complex element values in metadata systems based on the qualified Dublin Core model. These recommendations and minor editorial changes in this document can be expected to take place in the near future. It is highly desirable to be able to encode or serialise structured values within a plain-text string.
Some generic methods are in common use.
A number of named encoding schemes use punctuation characters within a text string to indicate specific components. In other cases there may be good reasons to store data in element attributes rather than element content. Note that there is no intrinsic way to indicate structure within the values of attributes of HTML elements. The notation should normally be used only when no other suitable scheme is available. It is based on methods used and found successful elsewhere, but is more generalised than the preceding standards.