XML spec is longer than one page, granted, but it's about three times shorter than YAML spec. And XML spec describe not only the XML syntax, but also a basic fo

XML spec is longer than one page, granted, but it's about three times shorter than YAML spec. And XML spec describe not only the XML syntax, but also a basic form of validation (DTD), which include references. Basic XML has only five special symbols (<, >, ', ", and &) and can be parsed in linear time. (Namespaces complicate things somewhat.)