Fair enough, I've experienced those pains myself. But what is the strategy with UXY? kind of a semi-fixed-width format that is only partially aligned, but still requires quoting/escaping? I'm not sure it's any better than CSV or PSV (pipe), and it also doesn't interoperate with existing tools.

I'm not attacking your overall idea, btw. I've just given this a bunch of thought myself, and the design space is very tricky. My current approach would be to use ASV (ascii codes 27-31) and abandon 'cat'-based readability in favor of a 'vcat' which gives you a better visual representation. Of course that has its issues too.. :)