[anderspitman]

I'm going off topic at this point but I'd think for a native app the main advantages of a binary format would be the static typing and code generation that come from using an IDL.

[wwright]

Rust (the language the Xi core is developed in) has static typing for JSON, as well as other serialization formats: https://github.com/serde-rs/json

[anderspitman]

I'm familiar with serde. It's an incredible project, but I wouldn't quite call it "static typing for JSON". You still have to unwrap the parse at some point. However, I will concede the point that if you have Rust on both sides then you'll get most of the benefits.

[greglindahl]

You can have a binary format that's self-describing. It's important to understand all of the independent parts that go into a format.