I'm not following your entire chain of thought.... perhaps if you put some links to the 'browse source' repo over on trac:
https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/speed-dreams/browser
Regarding parsing XML, I believe that we use an 'embedded' (and old) verison of txml lib. There is a bug report suggesting that this should be un-bundled:
https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/speed ... ticket/634
Regarding changing formatting/capabilities of track files. This is something that we're interested in, especially the variable width tracks. However this all needs to be carefully thought out, as we don't want to break functionality for 3rd party tracks/cars/etc.
Of course all problems and faults are historical from TORCS and we're open to suggestions/comments on how to fix them...
Simon