[flogic]

The only good point for XML is there are existing tools that do things via XML. There are tools that generate ATOM and RSS for you. And there are tools that consume ATOM and RSS. So if XML is already a well defined and followed standard for what you want do, use XML. In all other situations use something else.

[fauigerzigerk]

<p class="content">Then help me translate this into <span class="highlight">JSON</span> please</p>

How about that way:

{tag: "p", class: "content", text: ["Then help me translate this into ", {tag: "span", class: "highlight", text: "JSON"}, " please"]}

And that's just a small example where you can see all the start and end tags on one screen. Now change the example to insert a hyperlink, say, around the word "help". How easy is it to change?

[flogic]

Who said anything about JSON? XML is just shit. It requires documents be well formed which sucks when you want a secretary to deal with the documents. It's just a poor combination strict and loose.

[fauigerzigerk]

The difference between a format that adheres to some deterministically parsable syntax and one that doesn't is not something that I would characterise as "shit" or "not shit".