Oolite Bulletins

Forgive my ignorance, but am I right in thinking that newer OXPs have things like shipdata.plist written in Javascript now? Is there any danger of XML files no longer being read in future versions?

It is not exactly JavaScript. What you see in the newer shipdata.plists (and other plists for that matter) is the OpenStep plist format which, although older than XML, is considered more readable and easier to handle by most OXPers and coders (at least those who mod and code for Oolite). Standard XML continues to be supported, so you can use it normally.