The next file format

[Andreas Cord-Landwehr]

On Tuesday 26 August 2014 12:51:44 Andreas Xavier wrote:
> > I think we have most requirements now. I will write a first overview
> > suggestion and put on the wiki. Since most people seem to be preferring
> > JSON over XML I will propose that.
> I would like to add my voice to Todd and make a case for YAML.
> 
> YAML is more human-readable than JSON.  To a non-programmer balancing braces
> {} is as non-obvious as balancing tags.
> 
> From reading the Dataset_handling page it looks like gcompris plans on
> passing the payload opaquely to the applications as JSON.  YAML supports
> embedding JSON.
> 
> The only caveat is availability of a library.  I have looked through the
> CMake files of yaml-cpp and they have options covering a range of compilers
> (gcc,Clang andMSVC) and platforms (unix, win32, and iphone).  The only
> required package is Boost, which is already required in some KDE packages. 
> I think yaml-cpp is probably acceptable to KDE but I don't know where or
> who to check with.

So the question is, how important do we rate the use-case of (non-)programmers 
opening the ZIP archives and editing the vocabulary files by hand in 
comparison to the "cost" of another library. (And that together with the quite 
heavy dependency of Boost.)
With an eye on making the live for porters (to Mac, Windows, Android,..) 
easier and taking into consideration that we are talking about a library and 
not an application, I am in favor of reducing external dependencies where 
possible and reasonable.

Cheers,
Andreas