Minor inconsistency in handling XMP data

[jhowell]

I have noticed a minor inconsistency in the handling XMP data between BreezeBrowser Pro 1.7.1 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0.

I used exiftool 6.93 to make batch changes to some jpeg photos and discovered that this tool is overly ambitious in escaping characters that have meaning in XML. It has the odd 'feature' of changing the single quote character in XMP fields to the five character string: & # 3 9 ;

This sequence actually displays as a single quote in Photoshop Elements 5.0, but displays as & # 3 9 ; in BreezeBrowser. I’m not sure whether or not this character sequence is allowed or not in XMP, but I wanted to note the inconsistency in its handling between Photoshop and BreezeBrowser.

[DavidB]

Chris is best placed to comment on this, but he's on holiday. For the present, two thoughts occur.

XMP is a data design standard, not a language. XMP files are written in XML, and that drops us straight into the standards minefield associated with HTML and its derivatives.
Adobe is not necessarily consistent in observing even the standards it has authored. For instance, BB Pro sticks firmly to the IPTC/XMP standard in labelling and grouping IPTC tags, while Photoshop Elements does not.