You'll want to keep an eye on this pull request as this is what I was saying I'd try to get into MAME for you.
It would split things up into three softlists (see the apple2_flop_*.xml files for details on how that works) and that should make things a little simpler for you.
Hopefully this will be acceptable to Vas et al. as I think it's a good foundation starter for your work.
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Put in a PR for softlist splitting.
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