ready-made file format for "file pibes"?

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

I am writing an application that does a lot of filtering of much data
through a sequence of filters.

After some thinking and wasting a lot of time with an object oriented design
with GUI and all, I decided that the Real Way to do this is to create the
filters as independent programs that take input and produce output in the
good, olde UNIX way, using good olde MAKE to track what needs to be done
next.

Now, I need to simplify even further and leach on even more common knowledge
:) so it is obvious to anyone how to extend the collection of filtering
methods.

Is there a Python library for defining and using a good (i.e. humanly
readable), text-based format that one can use for the intermediate files?

ZConfig is - as I understand it - read-only and it is difficult (for me) to
completely understand what the general principles are because anything
appears possible with it. I am unsure of Pyxie mainly because the
documentation does not describe the "philosophy" and I would rather not hack
up a parser for XML myself for my very-own-xml-format-that-no-one
understands.

If the experience with ZConfig is good, then maybe one can sidestep this and
simply write files that can later be read by ZConfig?

I need to save state between filter runs too and I would like to use the
same mechanism everywhere.

I also need some form of hierachi, i.e. for including information from
further up the chain to know what triggered a filter so that downstream
tools can get that information.

Something as simple as a stansa-format (like .netrc) will probably be
servicable with a little work - but if someone has already defined a better,
more commonly-used format, I am all game.

Any Clues??

mvh,
frithiof jensen.