Every time we have a conversation that touches on any serialization or configuration file format, it doesn’t take long for someone to pull out the flail and sta

Every time we have a conversation that touches on any serialization or configuration file format, it doesn’t take long for someone to pull out the flail and start beating on XML again. XML might not be the best format for everything, and I for one am glad to use other formats for simple structured data. But when it comes to representing complex content, there is no other format that even comes close to being as useful and usable. * All digital publishing of ebooks uses XML inside ZIP files. * All contemporary mainstream word processors (Word, LibreOffice) use XML inside of ZIP as the basic file format. * Automatic customized conversion processes from Word to InDesign or from InDesign to EPUB use XML at the heart. * Let’s not forget the web itself, which is still mostly SGML in the form of HTML. Not XML per se, but only different in the details. Not only is XML the only practical serialization format for working with publication content, but the presence of mature schema tooling is intrinsic to making publication automation robust in a given context. I’m very glad for JSON and JSON schema in the domain of APIs. But in the domain of content data, it’s all XML. Every serialization format has a domain for which it is most appropriate (whether or not it is the best choice in that domain.) I’m really liking the shape of nested text for the domains in which I would have used YAML.