In my opinion, JSON works well for data interchange, but it's overused for configuration, it's not localization-friendly, and it's too syntactically noisy. INI is simple but lacks hierarchical structures and doesn't have a formal specification. Confetti is intended to bridge the gap.
I aim to keep Confetti simple and minimalistic, while encouraging others to extend it. Think of it like Markdown for configuration files: there's a core specification, but your welcome to create your own variations that suit your needs.
XML still works well as a configuration format.
Is it verbose? Very much so, but it ticks all the boxes:
- No ambiguity
- Typed
- Quick to parse
- Has Schemas that allow validation
- Widespread tooling support
All we needed was for applications to publish their XML schema files and any XML tool could allow for friendly editing.
eh ...
Okay, maybe it's quick. But it's also surprisingly hard to do "right". Just look at libexpat. Sure, many issues could be prevented with another programming language. But there are still regular updates because parsing custom entities is a minefield.
That said, I also like XML for all the other reasons you mentioned. Just don't do it like Maven.