First of all, when we talk about SOAP we are not necessarily talking about angle brackets. Likewise, when talking about XML we are not necessarily talking about elaborate characters flying over the wire.
The main thing to understand in this context is that Indigo/WCF follows the logical thought model of XML and SOAP - the so called InfoSet. So, an Indigo message follows the logical model of a SOAP Envelope.

Apart from that, the next step would be to determine how to *serialize* this SOAP Envelope. This can be as XML 1.0 (read: angle brackets) or as MTOM or as a custom binary shape - or you define and implement your own serialization party.

To prove this, Indigo has several pre-defined bindings which determine which transport protocol and which type of serialization to use. The basicProfileBinding for instance uses XML 1.0, SOAP 1.1 over HTTP 1.1. On the other there is something called the netProfileTcpBinding which uses TCP and a binary shape for sending the messages.

So, to answer your inital question: Indigo in Beta 1 is SOAP-only, which does *not automatically* mean XML and text representation... but it will also support other communication styles like REST etc. starting from Beta 2.

Makes Sense?


Christian
thinktecture
http://weblogs.asp.net/cweyer/