The biggest problem with XML is that people don't understand how to implement it properly and end up with stuff like you talk about above. Namespaces in particu

The biggest problem with XML is that people don't understand how to implement it properly and end up with stuff like you talk about above. Namespaces in particular can help with the problem, but I see tons of APIs failing to implement them in ways that actually alleviate the bloat, and they instead opt for insanely verbose Java-style naming conventions that do implement namespaces and attributes that ultimately just make concise XPath a nightmare.