JSON5 is a real sweet spot for me. Closing brackets, but I don't have to type every tag twice. Comments and trailing commas.
what I really dread in XML though is that XML only has idref/id standardized, and no path references. so without tool support you can't navigate to a reference target.
which turns XML into the "binary" format for GUI tools.
Maybe, but XML tools are also just superior to JSON counterparts. XPath is fantastic, and so is XSD and XSLT. I also quite like the integration with .NET.
My general experience with JSON as a configuration language has been sad. It's a step back from XML in a lot of ways.
however most oss builds on libxml which is stuck in xslt 1 and xpath 2 iirc...
I recently stumbled upon James Clark's youngest brainchild the ballerina language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark_(programmer)#Caree...