"XML Logging" is kind of an oxymoron.
Most xml logging programs don't append to the end of the file, they instead re-create the file with new contents every time they go to add an item to the "log".
This results in really really bad I/O patterns, and also means the file can't be monitored by watching the end of it with eg tail -f.
So it's not really good for performance, and isn't really externally watchable, so it defeats two goals of logging right off the bat.
It can be workable if the application is willing to log single items as xml, and leave the document unclosed until the file closes, but this causes xml parsers to be unhappy with the intermediate state.
For splunk, "xml logging" tends to cause indigestion because our content tracking assumes logfiles don't change their already-written contents (because it doesn't make sense to ever do so.) If there are some important apps, we may have to introduce tricky logic to rewind our idea of EOF to before the closing tags, but this would likely have to be configurable, and putting an xml parser in the tailer is not very exciting.
Of course Adium is built aroud libpurple, and I happen to know it support plaintext logging because I've configured my installs of gaim -> pidgin -> adium to do plaintext logging for around a decade now, because it's easier to parse, easier to grep, easier to read, faster, cheaper, safer, and generally better. I recommend you do the same.
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