Via Tender: Return Apple "plist" format?

Assigned to Tender discussion #525. As reported in Tender:

Is there any interest in returning the modified XML format that is known as the Apple PLIST format? I think this format would make app development on Macs and iOS devices wicked easy.

It's not that XML parsing is hard, but if the XML that was returned was an "apple property list", then turning the XML into objects to be used by the rest of your code (arrays, dictionaries, keys) is, like, 2 lines of code. This would reduce bugs, allow the XML to change over time without XML parsers having to change, etc. - a new key would just be a new string in the resulting NSObject.

At it's core, the changes are simple. Instead of:
VALUE

You do:
key_name
<string|integer|date>VALUE</string|integer|date>

String becomes an NSString type, integer becomes an NSNumber type, and date becomes an NSDate* type. There are other types (boolean).

Making arrays and dictionaries is simple, too.
If I wanted to have an array of things, I would do
name

(all my other keys)

And replace "array" with "dict", and you get a dictionary (associative array).

I would be willing to help generate the code for this (it's probably just PHP, right?) and do testing on it.

I think such a format could really help Mac/iOS development explode.