Sorry if this is off-topic, I didn't follow the thread from the very beginning, but wouldn't something like YAML work for you perhaps?
http://yaml.org/
Perhaps, but the spec makes my skin crawl. Also, it seems ill-fit for efficient machine-to-machine communication (yaml seems to be designed to be easily (?) read/edited by humans, a thing which I don't require at all).
https://alt.textdrive.com/pl/
Naah.
--Irmen -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
