LOL. not far off
They started out with something close to YAML. As the project moved forward, they found out they needed to represent logic with interlinked sections. They needed section 3, point a to link back to section 1 point 3, sub point 2. So they toyed with some assembly-like operations. Then they needed some inheritance. They really just slowly re-implemented the common applications of xml one at a time, it just had less brackets and <> symbols when they were done.