I would hazard a guess that the concept of a comprehensive content management system, demonstrated to varying degrees of controversy and success by other software platforms, was the driver behind adding .xmp metadata files in the first place. By having them as XML format files they're completely accessible to third party analysis, without needing hooks into Poser's Library databases, though that could be accomplished, but also avoids the need to increase the complexity of the databases themselves. The downside is that without investment of resources to actually populate them with meaningful data across the suite of bundled Poser content (I've never looked. Maybe that is there) and also provide guidelines or extra mechanisms which take advantage of the feature and effectively demonstrate its benefit to users, many are unaware of its existence and have no idea how to make use of it.

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My ShareCG Stuff

Verbosity: Profusely promulgating Graham's number epics of complete and utter verbiage by the metric monkey barrel.