Yet another plaintext data format, inspired by CSV, YAML, and Groovy/Kotlin DSLs. Focuses on text/strings and structure.

So there are no surprises, the biggest caveats right away are:

• No numbers or booleans, as in, they are not distinguished from strings. But they should not be horrible to deal with.
• No escape sequences. Characters are treated literally including newlines, and unicode characters are not specially handled.
• Inline whitespace is a delimiter and separates unquoted strings by default.
• Other unusual syntax.

See the spec for more info and some reasoning.

• CSV: Allows nested structure. Otherwise slightly more inconvenient if anything.
• JSON: Less clunky structure (e.g. easier to stream) and leaner syntax, while still giving the option of well-defined boundaries and form.
• YAML: Simpler to parse, no ambiguity with data types, while keeping some of the convenience.
• XML: More human oriented, similar flexibility, although not a markup language.
• S-expressions: More human oriented.
• INI/TOML/HOCON: Not as convenient for configuration, but allows for more flexibility.

NestedText apparently has a similar philosophy but bases its structure on YAML, whereas this format has structure more similar to XML or S-expressions. KDL, SDLang, Confetti, HUML also have similar goals but obviously we need yet another standard.