Hey Bob. I got your email and sent a response. You can also ask questions here and I will answer.
As for an XML Editor, am I guessing you are using a Windows platform. I use Linux as my primary OS and I am a big fan of Gedit. Gedit has colorations that you can specify and I use the Python coloration. It works fine with XML also.
You can get Gedit for Windows here:
http://live.gnome.org/Gedit/WindowsAnother thing I like about Gedit, at least for the Linux version, is that I can create sessions which will open all of the files that I saved to that session inside tabs in Gedit. It's really lovely when I am editing certain portions of the code.