Premise:

I am parsing a file that is quite nearly XML, but not quite. From this file I would like to extract data and output in a file that a user could open up in some program and read. To make the data reasonable, I would almost certainly need to format the text. In case it matters, I will probably be using Java to write the program.

Problem:

I cannot find a file format that supports formatting without having terribly complex rules and encoding problems.

Attempts:

• I looked into a basic .txt extension first, but it does not have enough formatting advantage.
• I then tried a .rtf extension, but the rules for outputting text seem to be terribly complicated.
• It was then suggested that I used XML, but I do not understand how this file would be viewed. This appears to be probably the best solution, but I don't understand much about it. Perhaps somebody could shed some light here.

In Other Words:

Could somebody suggest and easy to use file format and/or shed some light on how to use XML for text formatting and viewing?