I’ve used the program defaults and am surprised I have this very tight spacing after an XML import. Did I do something wrong?
No, you haven’t done anything wrong. Dorico does allow that space to get tight, arguably too tight, because it doesn’t force there to be any additional space after the flag. We need to do a bit more work on how Dorico considers the distance between very close items, and give you a bit more direct control over how big the gap should become in those circumstances.