Why is it so critical what the output looks like? The point of a TAP parser is to assemble a data structure representing the test run: then you can emit that information in whatever way, in color and animation if you like, or compare it with other test runs. This *particular* output format is a feature of the "make test"/"prove"-like tool, and it's essential to make it readable for *humans* running the tests in interactive mode, but not necessarily some format that's reparsable by another process into abstract data. So tabular format isn't unreasonable, for example.

That said, I deeply encourage you to make the intermediate abstract test result available for any further processing. How you serialize it is not so important. We've used YAML in Pugs, but Test::TAP::Model doesn't really care. Speaking of which, I've not been following your design, have you considered using that model in the first place?

In reply to Re: Need advice on test output by gaal
in thread Need advice on test output by Ovid

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