Or have you considered only having the structure in the xml and actual data in files? i.e replace data with file name. With bigger data this looks like better way. uuencoding pictures looks like unneeded bloat. It might work fine for few notes but storing more data inside the nodes may become problem in future (memory,speed). sqlite is a good choice too, it is used in GPE PIM applications. I think they used xml too but later found it simply does not scale with more data.