That sounds like a very passive-aggressive way to deal with a problem. Do you do the same thing when writing programs?
In general, when you see something inefficient, you can either fix it to make it better, or ignore and come up with random workarounds.
In my opinion, a config file which cannot be edited by hand, and which needs a special editor with non-trivial learning curve, is a inefficiency. I can either ignore it, and set up the specialized tools; or I can fix it, by ripping out XML and replacing it with something more human-editable, like TOML or YAML. In large teams, it is almost always better to fix it -- sure, I will spend a few hours getting rid of XML, but this will pay itself off in the long term, as no one else will have to bother with special setup anymore.
(This obvious only applies to the systems where XML is a minor part, like a single configuration file. If your system has huge amount of XML, you better learn the right tools)
I myself don't even use syntax highlighting and normally work in vim and although I do make errors in XML sometimes, I find that I make at least as many syntactic errors in Python or C code that I have to weed out before I can proceed. But I never heard anyone complaining about Python or C being too strict :)
I am writing non-XML code most of the day, and I do not have structured editing / auto braces enabled. So when I need to edit that one XML config, I'll open it in my regular editor, which will provide at most syntax highlight, and edit it as needed with a bit of swearing. And next time, I would promise myself I'd choose a different config format which does not need special editors.