> Question: why must the square brackets be used[2]?
There is no technical benefit behind the square bracket notation. As you mentioned, it’s mostly for readability reasons. My take on pleasant plain-text formats is to make use of symbolic notation if ever possible, because that makes the format more intuitive to understand. The `[ ]` resemble a check box, and it should be immediately clear what that means. The drawback is that you need to type in 2 extra characters, of course, so it’s really a tradeoff in the end.
There is no technical benefit behind the square bracket notation. As you mentioned, it’s mostly for readability reasons. My take on pleasant plain-text formats is to make use of symbolic notation if ever possible, because that makes the format more intuitive to understand. The `[ ]` resemble a check box, and it should be immediately clear what that means. The drawback is that you need to type in 2 extra characters, of course, so it’s really a tradeoff in the end.