Aldemir Akpinar writes:
No, I've actually asked an honest question.
In that case you'll get my honest answer. I've implemented several file/network formats vaguely like that journal format, one of them has likely been used by millions of people.
In each case, the team decided to use a header/packet format, because that made both writing and reading simple. In the case of the network format we additionally included a magic number to catch version skew, and did it using binary because that made for the simplest reading code. Reading a 16-byte header using read(2) is simpler than reading a textual header.
I don't remember anyone on either of the teams suggesting that using text had advantages for developers or users. Generally we just chose what was easier to ship reliably and parse/generate with simple code.
In one case we used binary because even though the data were readable text, they weren't editable (the actual format had non-trivial restrictions). I don't remember the details, but for some reason we worried that people would hand-edit files and cause problems deep inside the reading program.
I find it totally plausible that the systemd people would design the format for similar concerns and end up a format where a fixed-size header includes a tag type and length, then a variable-sized packets mostly containing log lines, and then another header. That kind of thing is so easy to read and write using https://linux.die.net/man/2/read and its companion functions.
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