[userbinator]

From experience, I think the whole "human-readable" idea is a bit overrated. All it means is that the format is entirely/mostly in ASCII. But if you have a hex editor, like all good programmers should, binary formats are not any less human-readable (or writable) nor more difficult to work with; and for some, even a text editor with CP437 or some other distinctive SBCS will suffice after a while. It's somewhat like learning a language; and if you are the one developing the format, it's a language that you create.

Then again, I grew up working with computers at a time when writing entire apps in Asm/machine language was pretty normal as well as other things which would be considered horribly impossible by many developers of the newer generation, and can mentally assemble/disassemble x86 to/from ASCII, so my perspective may be skewed... just a tiny little bit. ;-)

[Volt]

But the phrase is "human-readable" and not "programmer-readable".

[Whitestrake]

A minor gripe with your comment, but as a programmer conceivably must be human, both conditions are satisfied when a programmer is capable of reading it.