Support for getting values from multiple files would be hugely helpful, especially if combined with a way to specify which files take precedence if there are conflicts. This should make sharing common config (logging, say) across multiple apps easier. The multi-file approach is also VC-friendly.
I recently coded up something like this using bash & serious abuse of optparse.
Ehi, I think I know that firm. 
Just for precision, ZConfig files are *not* XML. Indeed, ZConfig existence is due to the need to have an alternative to XML for Zope "external" config files. It only uses XML-like tags for nested section headers, but the rest is almost free-form.
Commenting by HaloScan
