What is your argument exactly? Do you even understand what I said?
Here's the output of one of our services:
fmri svc:/application/harbor/unicorn:default
name Unicorn Rack Server
enabled true
state online
next_state none
state_time Sat Aug 07 12:52:45 2010
logfile /var/svc/log/application-harbor-unicorn:default.log
restarter svc:/system/svc/restarter:default
contract_id 18664
dependency require_all/none svc:/milestone/network:default (online)
dependency require_all/none svc:/system/filesystem/local:default (online)
dependency require_all/refresh file://localhost/var/harbor/unicorn.conf (online)
dependency require_all/refresh file://localhost/var/harbor/config.ru (online)
dependency require_all/refresh file://localhost/var/harbor/log (online)
See the dependencies? It took one of my guys all of a couple hours to grasp the documentation and set this up. Without ever having seen it before.
If you want the plain XML, just 'svccfg export unicorn'
You're a fool if you think a maintained, documented simple service like this has no value just because angle-brackets scare and confuse you.
If you had a more open mind, you might even ask yourself why it was done this way? Perhaps it's because with XML you can spend all of a few minutes in practically any programming language and have something that can manage the services?
And perhaps that might come in handy if you were managing a lot of servers, or building a cluster that you wanted to manage, install, and update services on?
Sure you could go the usual route of inventing your own syntax. tcl, lisp, or python compatible if you're lucky. Or you might just consider that maybe interoperability isn't the fall of Rome while you dismiss one of the most robust service management tools around just because you might have to write a bit of XML.
Unfortunately I didn't goto school. I did it the old fashioned way. I read people smarter than me. I'm glad I could do the same for you. :-)
Try to recognize the differences between text file and XML file.
Try to understand the difference between 'file /bin/sh' , 'ldd /bin/sh' and /usr/bin/java.