Draft PEP on RSON configuration file format

[Patrick Maupin]

On Mar 2, 5:36 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> You seem to be taking the position that if you start with a config file
> config.json, it is "too hard to edit", but then by renaming it to
> config.rson it magically becomes easier to edit. That *is* ludicrous.

No, but that seems to be the position you keep trying to ascribe to
me: "Wait a minute... if JSON is too hard to edit, and RSON is a
*superset* of JSON, that means by definition every JSON file is also a
valid RSON file.  Since JSON is too hard to manually edit, so is
RSON."

> Perhaps what you mean to say is that JSON *can be* (not is) too hard to
> edit, and RSON *can be* too hard to edit too, but RSON has additional
> benefits, including being easier to edit *sometimes*.

I have said as much, in multiple prior postings on this thread, if you
care to look.

> So far you have done (in my opinion) a really poor job of explaining what
> those benefits are.

That's certainly a valid complaint, and I can certainly believe that's
true (and I'm going to be working on the doc some more), but instead
of making this complaint, you made the (still silly IMO) assertion
that a superset has to be as unreadable as the base set.

> You've bad-mouthed existing config formats, then
> tried to convince us that RSON is almost exactly the same as one of those formats apart from a couple of trivial changes of spelling (True for true, etc.).

This is conflating two different issues.  In a lame attempt to show
the silliness of the argument that the superset must be as bad as the
subset, I was trying to explain that, if you make a very few changes,
Python is a superset of JSON.  However, my lame attempt at this was
obviously as poorly thought out as some of the rest of my words,
because it started an additional discussion that wasn't really germane
to the real issues about configuration files.

> In my opinion, if you're going to get any traction with RSON, you need to
> demonstrate some examples of where JSON actually is hard to write, and
> show how RSON makes it easier. It's not good enough showing badly written
> JSON, it has to be examples that can't be written less badly given the
> constraints of JSON.

Agreed, and I will be working on that.

Best regards,
Pat