The solution to this nonsense is and has always been s-expressions. XML reinvented s-expressions but they made a bad job of it and made them much too verbose.

The solution to this nonsense is and has always been s-expressions. XML reinvented s-expressions but they made a bad job of it and made them much too verbose. I always use s-exprs for problem-free config files but sadly everybody else takes one look and says "but all those parentheses! I'd rather have my strings interpreted as very large numbers, thank you."