This is a rough record from Dan Brickley trying to capture the history of RDF/XML syntax, I believe it's a must-read for any format developer: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/200407/swintro/syntaxdesign.html Note the subtitle: "Syntax issues: the XML encoding". Please don't take this as RDF vs. XHTML posturing, from where I'm sitting XHTML (especially microformats) look like the best thing that could have ever happened to RDF. The rationale there is pretty much summed up in this Dan Connolly mail from 2000: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2000Mar/0103 Cheers, Danny. -- http://dannyayers.com