I see what you’re saying, but I also haven’t ever used anything but the first two formats, and my goal was always readability not emphasis.

Storing the AST instead of the text is a lossy encoding, but would we lose something more valuable than what we gain? If your example is the best thing we’d lose - i’d say it’s still net a massive win.

and there are ways to emphasize different parts, that would survive the roundtrip to AST. E.g. one way to emphasize depth:

    setValue([bar, glob], 1)

    setValue([bar, plu, a1], 21)

    configure(bar, 1, 21, fol)

    // $formatblk: tabular_keypaths, aligned_assignments

    bar   .glob       = 1

    bar   .plu    .a1 = 21

    // $formatblk-end