Quite frankly I support using XML in this case. We need some kind of scripting that is implementation-independent so that we can easily change our implementation later on if needed. YAML is out, simply because its a pain to write parsers for and we're moving away from it in general. As Zenbitz points out, Python isn't terribly useful unless we have the data structures designed, which sort of defeats the purpose of scripting. JSON would work as it is simply a subset of Python, but for consistency XML is probably our best option.
Keep in mind that it is fairly trivial to write parsers for XML and JSON, so we can change it later if needed. But for the time being my suggestion is to just go with XML and deal with the details later.
I'll swing with that. I just really, really hate editing XML. I don't really see much of an implementation difference between pure-python and XML in terms of knowing the data structures, because you can have something like:
fitness = {'name': "Fitness", 'type': 'Stat' 'level': 'Primary', secondary_affected: [('Long-Distance Running', 1), ('Lifting Capacity', 0.3), ('Carrying Capacity', 0.3), ('Sprint Speed', 0.7)], 'skills': [('Something here', 0.5)]}
or you could have...
<stat level='Primary' name='Fitness'>
<affect type='Secondary'>
<stat level='Secondary' name='Long-Distance Running' weight='1' />
<stat level='Secondary' name='Lifting Capacity' weight='0.3' />
<stat level='Secondary' name='Carrying Capacity' weight='0.3' />
<stat level='Secondary' name='Sprint Speed' weight='0.7' />
</affect>
<affect type='Skills'>
<skill name='Something here' weight='0.5' />
</affect>
</stat>
