Property List/XML

The XML property list format is one of several formats that have been use for plist files, the standard means for applications under operating systems descended from NeXTSTEP (including current Apple OSs) to store configuration data. The XML format was introduced by Apple to replace the earlier format used in NeXTSTEP, which was also text-based but resembled programming-language syntax rather than markup-language syntax as is used with XML.

This format is a simple XML schema that uses the following elements to represent the core foundation types:

CFString CFNumber       or          CFDate CFBoolean      or          CFData CFArray CFDictionary