Why Bother?
I guess that, so far, XHTML looks like a great idea to... waste your time. If it doesn't add anything to HTML, was it worth the effort?
There is no doubt that it was worth the effort but XHTML 1.0 is the first station on a longer road. XHTML 1.0 serves primarily two purposes: firstly it increases coherence within the W3C, secondly it will enable the modularization of HTML.