

Alternatives to XML? - ardit33

I have grown to really dislike XML as a comunicating protocol/data serialiser.  It is very verbose and inefficient, especially for mobile use.  Its main advantages are: it is ubiquitous, and there are many free tools, parsers, marshallers available for any languages.<p>Assuming you have control both to the server and client,  what would be a good alternative to XML? 
I thought about Json, but I don't like its syntax.
What's your experience with these alternatives?
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bayareaguy
For simple transport, I've always liked <http://cr.yp.to/proto/netstrings.txt>

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boucher
never heard of it before, but our custom protocol is pretty similar to this.

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gaika
yaml or thrift (binary)

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ScottWhigham
yaml is definitely a logical alternative, I think

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stevecooperorg
yaml? not used it myself, but possibly worth a look.

