If you are a C++, python or C dev and fancy playing about with
Protocol buffers here is a useful project for you . . .
Some time ago Andreas's Android bitcoin wallet moved their wallet format from a Java specific one to one based on protocol buffers (protobuf). I have just upgraded MultiBit to use the same format for new wallets.
It is the data format used for the majority of Google's machine-to-machine chatter and is compact and easy to extend.
You can auto-generate accessor code in a variety of programming languages using a message definition file, which for bitcoinj is here:
http://code.google.com/p/bitcoinj/source/browse/core/src/bitcoin.proto?name=release-0.5There are protobuf generators for (at least) C++, python and C that I know of.
Having a bitcoin wallet format that is easy to read and write to in a variety of programming languages sounds like it is a Good Thing To Have so if you have the skills, the time and the inclination please, well, give it a go!
Jim, I really like google's protobuf library, and was looking forward to using them for something. They seem to have great support across multiple languages.
However,
for Armory wallets, I'm sticking to pure, manual, binary files. I may just be stupid stubborn, but I like the 100.0% control over every bit in the file, and not letting any outside library touch it. I recognize this is much smaller scope than the BSD-DB library that let to the wallet encryption bug, but I'm still paranoid about it. The wallet is one the thing I won't outsource to any other code.
However, for just about anything else (or most other apps, where the developers aren't as paranoid as me), I think it's great