Given that the file is already produced by automatic tools, no, converting it to XML doesn't add any magic. *Especially* if the conversion can be accomplished by a 100 line script - any tool that would benefit from an XML form can just concoct one...
As for building documentation - no, that takes literate and attentive *human* effort. Arbitrary layers of syntax don't really contribute. Feel free to prove me wrong by *building* such tools, and showing that they do something qualitatively more interesting :-) XML is cool, but it is not a substitute for actual work. Note also, if you're going down this path, that there is an extant *package* format "standard" that is XML based (ie the package *itself* is in XML, instead of tar+gz+ar or cpio+cruft) that might start to get you real leverage... but that's not where dpkg's value lies; the handling of real world cases as encoded in dpkg *and* in the developers-guide / packaging-manual, the experience represented there, is the truly significant part -- provably so, if such a conversion can be executed programmatically...
