>They are simply a standard for communication, not unlike writing down an http:// http:// URL in human-readable text. So why not encode that data in a human re

>They are simply a standard for communication, not unlike writing down an http:// http:// URL in human-readable text. So why not encode that data in a human readable format? I think it's the same argument as a binary storage format vs. plaintext. Sure you gain a slight bit of efficiency on the application side of things. But the decreased portability and ease of use is usually not worth the trade-off.