I believe bootgood also worked together with the mess crew on this.
They have been refining the xml-add-on-file and have a working version now.
The goal is to have a basic set of options for all platforms, then some plugin options for specific systems where needed.
More info here:
http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthre ... #Post36404
Mame has already begun to completely switch over to this system
However as DAT maintainer/Dumpers we should not be making the individual files.
We need a central database which like DOM can output the individual xml's for us.