FTD is XML with neater (hopefully) syntax. XML got a lot of things right, XML has XSD for rich data schema definition, Unlike JSON/YML. FTD too has first class

FTD is XML with neater (hopefully) syntax. XML got a lot of things right, XML has XSD for rich data schema definition, Unlike JSON/YML. FTD too has first class data modelling capabilities, you can specify schema for a "record", which is equivalent of struct. And you can have ADT's (which we call or-type). Then we have variables, lists, etc. If you want to share a data file with someone, FTD is a very compelling alternative to define the schema, represent the data. Further, XML also has XSLT, which can be used for rendering XML data to arbitrary strings, but is mostly used for creating HTML, so data can be visualised properly. Unfortunately XML relined on HTML (which in turn relied on CSS and Javascript). With FTD you do not have to mess with such 4 technologies (these are hotchpotch mix, not a well designed whole). XML was meant to be handwritten, but markdown vs HTML has clearly demonstrated SGML syntax is not great for writing, markdown is. You will see that authoring types, representing data, and writing prose is really pleasant in FTD compared to all of them. Check out this FTD fiddle for example: https://play.fifthtry.com/?ekey=z2jcGxP1hAI01i1Fho515Q https://play.fifthtry.com/?ekey=z2jcGxP1hAI01i1Fho515Q, this has record definition, list creation. And then you can do event handling etc, for example here: https://play.fifthtry.com/?ekey=pMsktS3rOFnS0sGaSe3K0w https://play.fifthtry.com/?ekey=pMsktS3rOFnS0sGaSe3K0w