It feels to me like a project which is still in development. A parser does make sense for a search engine, which doesn’t run in real time.

The blockers are real-time parsing while the user waits, the complexity of writing a good parser, and the complexity for users of generating the code.

The complexity of writing a parser comes from featureitus, particularly features related to hCard embedding in hAudio.

About a worse standard that had tools, I think this is a pretty likely outcome. As limited as hTrack (http://yahoomediaplayer.wikia.com/wiki/How_To_Link) is, writing a parser or hand-writing the syntax is easy.