[mickeyp]

Sorry but XML is a good fit for this. Most people who've never used XML cannot ever fathom that it does actually do a number of things well.

Being able to layer markup with text before, inside elements, and after is especially important --- as anyone with HTML knowledge should know. Being able to namespace things so, you know, that OLE widget you pulled into your documents continue to work? Even more important. And that third-party compiled plugin your company uses for some obscure thing? Guess what. Its metadata gets correctly embedded and saved also, and in a way that is forward and backwards compatible with tooling that does not have said plugin installed.

So no, it wasn't 'hype'.

[Hnrobert42]

There are good use cases for XML.

There was also huge hype. XML databases, anyone? XML is now an also-ran next to json, yaml, markdown. At the time, it was XML all the things!