[corresation]

>SVG is based on XML, I don't think I've ever seen XML and 'astonishingly concise' in the same sentence before, congratulations for being the first.

The rudiments of the vector description is extremely concise. That it is XML is superficially irrelevant, and if you really think the text markers are so important, consider it a highly compressible binary format via GZIP. Ultimately it doesn't matter.

I've never seen any metric that holds SWF as being more efficient than real-world SVG.