[djedr]

> With XML, the complexity is the baseline, and it only goes up from there. With JSON, the complexity is just an option, the baseline is pretty simple.

Very well put. And we could lower the baseline substantially towards simplicity, even from JSON.

It's pretty clear that a lot of people think this way. Some even seriously try to figure out what such a baseline of simplicity would look like.

There are lots of simple indentation-based designs (similar to YAML) such as NestedText[0], Tree Notation[1], StrictYAML[2], or even @Kuyawa's Dixy[3] linked in this thread.

There seem to be less new ideas based around nested brackets, the way S-expressions are. Over the years, I have developed a few in this space, most notably Jevko[4]. If there ever will be another lowering of the simplicity baseline, I believe something like Jevko is the most sensible next step.

[0] https://nestedtext.org/en/stable/ [1] https://treenotation.org/ [2] https://hitchdev.com/strictyaml/ [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35469643 [4] https://jevko.org/