When XML came out into popularity I think the first thing I wrote was a small Python program to flatten/unflatten XML into per-line entries quite similar to the

When XML came out into popularity I think the first thing I wrote was a small Python program to flatten/unflatten XML into per-line entries quite similar to the example output in the article. The text streams that are processed line-by-line by dozens or hundreds of line-based tools are immensely powerful and universal. It's all Unix heritage and often overlooked by fancy modern designs that more often follow a fashion rather than root themselves in substance. Surely text streams have their share of limitations like everything else but in practise you can retrofit nearly anything into line-based text streams and get an immediate productivity multiplier by being able to apply a whole array of established tools to process that data. Proof of that power is that it has been worthwhile to write converters to and from text and other formats. Not only you can find translators to turn various hierarchical or object-oriented formats into text but you can even convert a PNG into text and back (with SNG). Text streams are like roads with lanes. They're ages old, they're pretty good at separating and guiding traffic, and they're somehow suboptimal in several senses yet rarely can anyone point out a single, clear practical improvement on laned roads, not to mention a system for containing traffic flows that is superior to them.