It's hardly too late. If you just look at the use case of application logging for example, the latest fashion is logging using JSON format log files, which is INSANE for a different set of reasons. I have servers that generate TB of log files on a regular basis. ASCII delimited log file format standard could be adopted by the application logging space, could result in some uniform tools that provide better streaming support for log shipping, and gain adoption in other adjacent use cases from there.