title: What are the latest options in Java logging frameworks?
body: <p>This question gets asked periodically, but I've long felt that existing Java logging frameworks were overcomplicated and over-engineered, and I want to see what's new.</p>
  
  <p>I have a more critical issue on my current project as we've standardized on JSON as our human-readable data encoding, and most logging frameworks I've seen require XML.  I would really rather avoid using JSON for 95% of my apps configuration, and XML for the rest just because of the logging framework (truth be told, I hate XML used for anything other than text markup, its original intended purpose).</p>
  
  <p>Are there any hot new Java logging frameworks that are actively maintained, reasonably powerful, have a maven repo, can be reconfigured without restarting your app, and don't tie you to XML?</p>