XML is a fairly simple format. It uses plain Unicode text rather than binary encoding, and all the structures are declared with predictable-looking tags. Nonetheless, there are still enough rules in the XML grammar that a carefully debugged parser is needed to process XML documents -- and every parser imposes its own particular programming style. An alternative is to make XML even simpler. The open-source PYX format is a purely line-oriented format for representing XML documents that allows for much easier processing of XML document contents with common text tools like grep, sed, awk, wc, and the usual UNIX collection.
