How does this address format creep? Why is it going to be better to support all the existing formats and now this one too? Does it really add that much?
The first formats filled a void. This format joins many players already on the field.
It's versioned, so if we come up with significant improvements later, we can bump the version.
This format fills two voids:
1. The lack of native types in most of the other formats
2. The lack of either editability or processing efficiency, depending on whether it's a binary or text format.
I developed this format because I'm tired of putting encodings on top of encodings (i.e. base64) and other such tricks, just to get my data across to the other side, and I want a general purpose data format that's efficient as well as readable.
The first formats filled a void. This format joins many players already on the field.