I love proto, but the textformat was an after thought. The binary format is rigorously defined, portable, extensible and optimized. The text format was reverse

I love proto, but the textformat was an after thought. The binary format is rigorously defined, portable, extensible and optimized. The text format was reverse engineered from the c++ implementation after the fact when folks found textproto useful. Unfortunately there are discrepancies between languages around the corner cases of the textformat and that's the sad world we live in. Avoid letting textproto be part of your user exposed interface.