I thought XML was a good idea, but IMO requiring quotes around even integer attribute values was an unfortunate decision.
I think it helps guard against incompetent authors who wouldn't understand when they're required to use quotes and when they're not. I see HTML pages all of the time where the author's done something like:
<img src=http://example.com/foo/bar/baz/spam/>
Sometimes it even has spaces in it. At least with a proper XML parser, they would know where they went wrong right away.
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