[RESOLVED] [2005] Off the wall XML question

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?

Not a very thought out question but here's what's really on my mind, especially after looking at some XML basics --

With the capability of the binary reader/writer and even serialization, I don't know why I'd ever need XML, especially just to save data to the hard drive.

It certainly is more complex, especially on the writer end.

?

At least for the time being, having somewhat a grasp on binary, I may just fughed aboud it.

Just a personal opinion of course, but I use XML because it is a universal data source. I can use one data file to run practically anything. I have a single XML file that is used by 2 VB.Net Apps, a web site, and a WAP site.

All of that from one file that is editable in any text editor.

XML has many advantages over plain text file. These are just a few that pop right out of my head:
1. Many applications support reading/writing xml files out of the box.
2. You can easily read/write xml file to/from a dataset.
3. Xml works with LINQ
4. Xml files can contain format information while text files can't.