OOXML bad? Try iTunes.

Technical folks like to wail about how defective OOXML (Microsoft's "open" format for Office) is. I agree -- with instructions like "render this table in the quirky way Word 95 did it", it's an impossible standard to implement.

However, that is nothing compared to the travesty that is iTunes. I've been having problems with my iPod; whenever I plug it in, iTunes spits up a DOS-like dialog box: "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive E:. Abort/Try Again/Continue." Googling suggests a possible fix: delete your iTunes preferences and reinstall.

Ugh. I'd rather not delete my license key and preferences, thankyouverymuch. So I decided to see what was in this file and if I could fix it myself.

I open up iTunesPrefs.xml in XEmacs and am presented with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>EQ Preferences</key>
    <dict>
        <key>EQPresets:129</key>
        <data>
        AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
        AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
        AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
        AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
        AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
        ....
    </data>
    </dict>
    <key>HTTP</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Cookies</key>
        <data>
        PD94bWwgdmVyc2lvbj0iMS4wIiBlbmNvZGluZz0iVVRGLTgiPz4KPCFET0NU
        WVBFIHBsaXN0IFBVQkxJQyAiLS8vQXBwbGUgQ29tcHV0ZXIvL0RURCBQTElT
        ...
        </data>
    </dict>
    <key>Keychain</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Keychain</key>
        <data>
        WqtWpl9/8NLX0QgFWU4ogEh/7aKP4SbSBd7LRQZ6G8NBJ8dt+AjSv4fs6UOK
        qZQ1PkuO6SqRct7r67XozEPbT8LIyXCZsHZe3w5qcvBQyWOzOTUVOJXT74ZC
        ...
        </data>
        <key>iTunes Library XML Location:1</key>
        <data>
        QwA6AFwARABvAGMAdQBtAGUAbgB0AHMAIABhAG4AZAAgAFMAZQB0AHQAaQBu
        AGcAcwBcAGMAdQB0AGgAYgBlAHIAdABcAE0AeQAgAEQAbwBjAHUAbQBlAG4A
        ...
        </data>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

And so forth.

Ok, so I can understand wanting to obfuscate things like my DRM keys (presumably what's behind the Keychain bit). But equalizer settings? Application paths? Huh?

If you're going to store things in a locked down, proprietary format, why go through the lengths to format and parse it in an interchange format like XML?