X-no-Archive:yes
I can think of one application for which I could welcome XML.

I use the latest version of one of the two major personal finance packages,
Money or Quicken. My and my wife's credit card companies either allow us
online access to our accounts from this software, or provide the ability to
download statement and recent activities as .QIFs, which our software
handles almost seamlessly. So when our 401k provider (a name I recognized
from elsewhere, and imagine everyone else would as well) offered statements
(only) as QIFs for download, this came as welcome news. Except the import
fails. And we get nothing, absolutely nothing, imported. Now, even a partial
import could be useful, and an import of everything except a handful of
malformed entries probably more so. When I called for assistance, I was told
to email their webmaster (!) for assistance; that email is still in Drafts,
and once I get around to finishing it, I will not be holding my breath.
While perhaps the import could be more robust, and behave better, I do not
fault the software company (which is why I am not telling who they are).
OTOH, were the problem more widespread, were lots of customers having
problems, I would think that the 401k provider would have found out, and
fixed it. So if it is their fault, it is probably not a widespread problem.
But the apparent absence of malice is little comfort.

Were this data described by XML, I would hope that the software could handle
this more gracefully, and perhaps present me with more options to do
something potentially useful. It probably will, in The Next Version...

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com