I agree but XML the language with out namespaces or schemas is still useful.<p>Schema like technology are surprisingly hard to implement and very similar to writing a type checker. Most human readable formats do not support any sort of validation and just now we are starting to see the newer formats try to come up with schema specifications (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;json-schema.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;json-schema.org&#x2F;</a>).<p>I think the problem with XML has little to do with the language but the organizing ivory tower organizations that got carried away with extending it... but at least those extensions&#x2F;enhancement were extensions and not modifications of the language itself (ie new versions).<p>An anecdotal observation is newer specifications for languages seem to follow a more open and transparent ala OSS philosophy (ie spec is on github).