Aye, I agree YAML would have been a much better choice. Off the top of my end I think there would be a lot less escaping needs and it’d be much more readable and easier to maintain, which is good for config files. Right now with JSON it’s rather curly brace hell and it’s very easy to get lost in all the nested brackets and braces.
Perhaps there was a technical limitation of some sort?
Ok here is segment of the keymap file and the equivalent in yaml. I think the yaml is leaner and easier to read.
JSON:
{ "keys": "backspace"], "command": "left_delete" },
{ "keys": "shift+backspace"], "command": "left_delete" },
{ "keys": "ctrl+shift+backspace"], "command": "left_delete" },
{ "keys": "delete"], "command": "right_delete" },
{ "keys": "enter"], "command": "insert", "args": {"characters": "\n"} },
{ "keys": "shift+enter"], "command": "insert", "args": {"characters": "\n"} }
]
YAML:
As a programmer, I can appreciate the convenience of JSON as a portable and well-supported format.
As an end-user, I struggle to imagine a more unreadable mess for dealing with a large configuration system such as Sublime’s. I never thought I’d find myself missing XML (for the keymaps).
To me this is brace/bracket/quoted literal/string escaping-hell. Definitely a step backwards from the previous “custom directive” syntax (or whatever it was in ST1) in terms of usability, IMO.
YAML is slightly better.
Anything that uses symbols rather than quoted string literals for keys would be a slight improvement. Like Ruby hashes, or even Javascript associative arrays, all of which are painlessly converted to JSON or other associative array structures.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I think this is a case where there’s a benefit to eating the pain of conversion on the backend (from a proprietary syntax) for the sake of the user.
Is the debate over already ?
I’d also like to throw in some support for YaML. After all, the resulting data type are the same, and not only do we avoid the { } hell, we also avoid the " " hell for property names.
Maybe would it be possible to at least give us the choice ? Like an option that says “Read .yml config files, then .json” or the inverse or so ?
Holy necro, Batman!
I’d like to throw in support for JSON. As ironcladlou mentioned, it’s extremely portable and widely supported. I can’t think of any user experience needs trumping these two programming requirements. Admittedly, YAML does share some formatting structure with Python but it’s not difficult to format JSON for readability.
My 2cents:
YAML IS AWESOME. As a configuration language, It is fast, flexible, metaprogrammable.
It would NOT be a big change, In-Fact it would be a dropin replacement because JSON is a valid subset of YAML.
All current JSON config files would work perfectly when being parsed by the YAML, making this the perfect time to switch over.
People won’t even have to know that PyYaml is actually parsing their Json file.
In additon to this, YAML has some really cool features such as anchors which allow us to reduce repetition in config files (define once, use many times.)
From the wiki definition:
[quote]YAML syntax was designed to be easily mapped to data types common to most high-level languages: list, associative array, and scalar.[4] Its familiar indented outline and lean appearance make it especially suited for tasks where humans are likely to view or edit data structures, such as configuration files, dumping during debugging, and document headers (e.g. the headers found on most e-mails are very close to YAML). Although well-suited for hierarchical data representation, it also has a compact syntax for relational data as well.[5] Its line and whitespace delimiters make it friendly to ad hoc grep/Python/Perl/Ruby operations. A major part of its accessibility comes from eschewing the use of enclosures like quotation marks, brackets, braces, and open/close-tags which can be hard for the human eye to balance in nested hierarchies.
[/quote]
So please, reconsider YAML. It’s awesome, It’s powerful, It’s a drop-in replacement.
JSON is verbose, bloated and ugly – YAML or CSON would be a great improvement.
Cson disqualifies as a configuration format because it is badly specified and requires coffeescript to be parsed (since it is essentially coffeescript). My 2ct.
I think my love for yaml is quite clear nowadays, so I doubt I have to say anything else regarding this thread.
Hi!
Yaml would be great for the following reasons:
{, alomost no quotes, no comma)And, it would stop those problems with Json:
So, please @jps or @wbond, consider swapping on YAML.
Matt
PS: if you’re for this swap too, please leave a comment, so we can see how many people would enjoy it, and so maybe it will accelerate the process.
@math2001 Jon and I have discussed the idea of using YAML. There are some definitely pluses to it, but some downsides also. One of the bigger issues is that significant whitespace isn’t intuitive to many users unless they’ve worked with a language like Python before. Using it for .sublime-syntax was a big win over XML or JSON. The additional complexity of understanding YAML was justified there since writing a syntax definition isn’t the sort of thing most users do.
We haven’t made a definitive call on it yet, but as with most other things, I’ll try to chime in and answer questions as people ask them. IMO, all of the XML files that are supported due to compatibility with TextMate would ideally be superseded by a format that is easier to modify. Solving this issue isn’t next on my list of things to do, but is definitely not low priority.
As with most parts of the implementation of Sublime Text, the implementation details required to maintain performance aren’t always obvious. Changing file formats requires that the parser we are using is extremely efficient, especially since there are thousands of .sublime-syntax, .tmPreferences, .sublime-settings and .sublime-snippet files that are loaded whenever Sublime Text is started.
You should take a look at Hjson. It does not suffer from JSONs trailing commas, allows comments and is easier to use than YAML.
Hi evrbd,
in some projects, e.g. nodeJS, a ‘package.json’-cfg-file gets changed by the NPM-/Yarn-tool and the User, too. Thus it cannot contain comment-lines, which would be helpful. The ordering of keys cannot be maintained ‘by-hand’, too.
In my workflow, i convert -by hand/script- from JSON to YAML and back. I have comments and key-order preserved and the benefit of a cleaner view for editing the YAML.
I’m working on a script that merges/diffs newly added keys from the JSON- into the YAML-file while preserving comment-lines in YAML. I used pythons ruamel.yaml-lib.
Later i’d like to make a ST-plugin, that automatically converts a JSON-config-file into a YAML-representation, opening the YAML in a editible-view, whereas the JSON-file opens in read-only view, if it opens at all.
I’m new to Sublime, so if there already exists a plugin that already does smth. similar, please tell me. I’d like to lern the sublime-API by example.
While i consider this scenario to be a special-case and i don’t expect this to become integrated into ST, i wonder if maybe such a situation is somehow ‘typical’ for others, too ?
In general-terms, having two files with identical contents but in different formats, that need to be kept in-sync and the file-formats can be (automatically)-transformed in both directions ?
Maybe this is already too much of IDE ? i’m not sure - i find such scenarios more often in my workflows and i need a supportive-editor to handle such stuff.
regards, andreas
@math2001 and @laktak ST’s config files allow trailing commas and comments. The user’s Preferences.sublime-settings file is the only one that doesn’t keep them when changing something e.g. via command palette. I use trailing commas and comments in keymaps, projects and plugin configs.
@delucia your keymap doesn’t have to look so bad if you format it better, e.g.:
[
{
"keys": ["backspace"],
"command": "left_delete",
},
{
"keys": ["shift+backspace"],
"command": "left_delete",
},
{
"keys": ["ctrl+shift+backspace"],
"command": "left_delete",
},
{
"keys": ["delete"],
"command": "right_delete",
},
{
"keys": ["enter"],
"command": "insert",
"args": { "characters": "\n" },
},
{
"keys": ["shift+enter"],
"command": "insert",
"args": { "characters": "\n" },
},
]
@twoolie people will know that PyYaml is actually parsing their config because ST will probably get slower on startup. Here is a Ruby benchmark and Python benchmark. Maybe somebody could do a benchmark of ST startup time with YAML vs JSON parser. I love ST for its speedy startup and actually I also love JSON for its unambiguity (though no comments and no trailing commas sucks, which ST “fixed”).
@bosinski your plugin could keep YAML configs in a folder, which get converted to JSON on save (e.g. Preferences.yaml becomes Preferences.sublime-settings). That way you keep the original YAML with comments and also have the performance benefit of JSON. You’d need to hook into the Preferences menu somehow.
Choosing a niche format over an established standard, like JSON and YAML, is hardly ever a good option (mostly due to the lack of an eco-system supporting it). It also doesn’t solve any of JSON’s shortcomings, as mentioned by the thread starter.
Apart from that – I’ve seen other JSON-like formats which set the same goal, and of all of them JSON5 appears to the closest of ever becoming standard. Until it’s not, I wouldn’t even consider it.
problem with most json replacements is that they are mostly targeting JS/Node world, not even close to needed performance level.
IMO JSON is restrictive but you can get the concept in 5min, YAML is packed with stuff like multiline syntax (at least two of them) and utlizes at least two methods of doing same, it’s very hard to learn yaml in short time to use it efficiently.
imo it would already help if you include the information that this is json format. I remember when I started I just copied over the original settings but had no clue what I was basically doing. I missed tons of , at the eol.
Though I prefer if it is just consistent. I do not get why some can be in that format other in two formats and some other can only be in that format. This is rather confusing, hard to document, maintain and contribution requires knowledge about all these formats
Hjson would have helped there.
Hjson is available on a number of platforms, including Python.
oh, you dont say ? How about that python is not even slightly faster than JS/Node ? Maybe because it’s also interpreted language, not compiled as C++ ?
Sublime is closed source so I have no idea how its config system is implemented. I mentioned Python because that’s what is used for plugins. There are others, see http://hjson.org.