Why is Microsoft supporting another XML-based standard when XML is hardly in use and is young enough as it is?
XML is a powerful yet simple way to represent structured data on the Web, and fully complements HTML for display. VML is one example of the many application-specific, XML-based formats that will be developed and implemented in the coming months. For instance, in the next version of Office, VML will be used to annotate HTML documents — to preserve formatting information of Office Art graphics between the native Office file format and HTML, thus enabling Office users to switch seamlessly between the two formats.
