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0 pointschatmasta2y ago0 comments

> Markdown and JSON are meant to be non-opague file formats that prioritizes portability and human readability over other features

I don't think human readability is a critical feature of JSON at this point. If that's your priority, you can use YAML. Readable JSON is nice because for small files you can read or edit small sections of it, and it's easy to debug when manipulating it with machine code. But there are plenty of cases where a huge JSON file is still useful even if it's barely human readable.

My heuristic has always been: use YAML if you expect humans to create the file (or maintain large chunks of it), otherwise use JSON. For example, Kubernetes config is YAML because humans create it from scratch, and it would suck to do that with JSON. Whereas package.json is JSON because machine code initializes it and humans only make minor edits to specific fields.

In the case of this canvas format, I wouldn't expect humans to create the file from scratch, so use JSON over YAML. Then the question is, will humans even care about reading the raw JSON? Probably not. So why not use something like SQLite or Protobuf? The most compelling reason would be that humans writing code to interface with the format can use parsing tools from their language's standard library.

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naikrovek2y ago

> I don't think human readability is a critical feature of JSON at this point. If that's your priority, you can use YAML.

Wow you have kinda lost the plot on a few things.

JSON was designed to be human readable and writable. YAML was designed to be a human readable format for the automated interchange of data between automated systems. Human writability was neither a goal for YAML nor its intended use. Like everyone else on the frakking planet, you’ve misunderstood what YAML was intended and designed for. YAML was never intended for human-written configuration storage, which is what everyone used it for the instant after they became aware of it.

YAML can bite you very hard if you misunderstand it. JSON is simply invalid if you misunderstand it when writing it.

If you don’t need human readability, use a binary format. Binary formats are so freaking fast compared to literally any structured text format, past, present, or future. High speed and low latency matter and binary formats make both of those easier.

If you need to inspect the binary data, write a viewer using the code you use to read it. It’s a lot simpler than people believe it to be. I find Protobuf to be more of a hassle than writing the code myself, and protobuf is very easy to use, and I’m quite a moron. Binary stuff is not hard.

desmondl2y ago

Yep, I think the compelling reason of humans writing code is key here. SQLite would make it less accessible for people to write external tooling to integrate with an obsidian vault. There are lots of existing and open that support diffing/parsing/syncing/manipulating json, while with sqlite you have to not only know sql but support another application’s database schema, which third party developers are less likely to do

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