I have sort of a vague question concerning XML as I haven't really started to learn much about it yet.

But a question comes to mind that may be a good starting point in my understanding of it.

I just completed a self-tutorial on the binarywriter and reader and I'm just wondering (out loud), if the main advantage of XML, other than it's standardization, is the fact that it may be more sophisticated in it's encoding/decoding capabilities?

What I mean is --

with binary the writing process is easy enough but there are quite a few steps you need to decipher the data on the reader end of things.

Is XML writer/reader more "user friendly" in that regard?