People love to complain about verbosity of XML, and it looks complicated from a distance, but I love how I can create a good file format based on XML, validate with a DTD and format with XSLT if I need to make it very human readable.

XML is the C++ of text based file formats if you ask me. It's mature, batteries included, powerful and can be used with any language, if you prefer.

Like old and mature languages with their own quirks, it's sadly fashionable to complain about it. If it doesn't fit the use case, it's fine, but treating it like an abomination is not.