I agree with you Fletch that JSON is more human readable than XML. But equals separated key/value pairs are even more human readable, even to humans who don't program. Sure, they are not able to hold nested data but that isn't always needed.

Many years ago I created what is essentially a hierarchical database for recording rights of way entirely in XML with separate files for every entry. So my code has generated 100's of 1000's of XML files!