>Is marking up text and data really programming? Or is it just a frustrating way to do document creation?

No and I more or less agree with you that XML is overrated for many things and has been way overcomplicated by the various standards processes. An essentially simple standard has turned into an ugly monster that few people can actually use without constantly looking at a reference guide <s>. In my book that's a real bad standard <bg>...

But, and it's a big but, you don't have to follow the latest additions. If you stick to the basics of XML you get a tremendous amount of flexibilty to do things and pass data around that you simply can't do easily any other way. Period!

If you build only standalone or C/S apps XML probably won't matter much to you, but if you build distributed applications over the Web it will!

+++ Rick ---