Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Unfortunately, the WP suffers by the re-inventing wheels syndrom (instead of switching to XML/SGML now).
Unfortunately one type of wheel doesn't fit every car. XML is designed to be primarily machine-readable and unambiguous, human-readability and ease of authorship is a secondary consideration. I once read an article by Tim Berners-Lee (?), saying among other things that users ultimately should not see XML except in exceptional circumstances, and that automated tools will be created to author it.
Wiki markup, on the other hand, is primarily designed to be easy to create and easy to read. Concerns such as the ease of parser design and avoiding ambiguity are decidedly secondary.
-- Tim Starling