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