Actually *looking* at the XML is right out -- but that should always be the case, no?
Some of the talks at EuroPython made me a little bit more interested in XML. People obsess a bit about the angle brackets, which is missing the point. AFAICS, the right viewpoint is that it's a standard for structured data. On one level, it's not much more exciting than ASCII.
(Edit: and of course, if you're a command line junkie, there's defaults(1)).
(Edit^2: etrepum: yes, I knew that. I'm not sure what your point is. *My* point, if it wasn't clear, was that having a structured format for config files is nice, and that an XML format is a reasonable way of doing that. NeXT plists would be fine, too).
(Edit^3: retract a silly bit of Edit^2)