[JimDabell]

> Now imagine that the workspace/project format for the defacto IDE for all Apple related stuff uses this exact same format

It doesn’t. Xcode project files are something that look a bit like a cross between JSON and an INI file. This is unofficial documentation showing what it looks like:

http://www.monobjc.net/xcode-project-file-format.html

That isn’t a property list; it’s something inherited from Project Builder from NeXTSTEP, which Xcode was originally based upon. Xcode project files would be a lot easier to deal with if they were property list files, because they are a standard, documented format with official tools to work with them. The Xcode project file format isn’t officially documented and doesn’t have generic manipulation tools like plutil.

Maybe you are mixing the project file up with the Info.plist file? That is a property list file, but its purpose is to tell the operating system about the application. It’s not the Xcode project file.

[xenadu02]

This is the original ASCII plist file format from NeXTSTEP. Foundation still supports reading these but not writing them.