YAML2

Hi Gang,

I wanted to tell you about a bold initiative that I started this week. I
call it YAML2.

The idea is that it is time to start up a new wave of YAML development,
while not disturbing the YAML toolchains that are in common use. YAML is
fairly usable and has no big fires to put out. Development of the language
has been fairly dormant. The Open Source world is so much bigger and rich
with tools and social systems. The YAML world we set out to create 10 years
ago, has barely reached the vision we dreamed of. Today, YAML is the
language of choice for simple config files, and dumping objects to readable
text. We thought it would be so much more. Serial processing of infinite
streams, realtime object messaging between multiple languages, YPath,
YSchema (and the rest of the stuff we could do better than XML) comes to
mind. I'd like to see books on a YAML world that is deserving of books.

My idea is to start a new community driven process with all these big goals
in mind, without disturbing the YAML user base in the process. When we
started out 10 years ago we had 3 people on a mailing list trying to agree
on a spec, and finally producing a tome that is very hard for mortals to
read, let alone implement. We ended up with a handful of languages
implementing things with very different APIs, and bugs from differing
interpretations of edge cases. On the other had, YAML is a real success! We
got something huge off the ground. We have a well defined language, some
decent implementations, a ton of experience and a great community. It's a
perfect foundation for Round 2.

So what is YAML2 about?

* It's about producing a YAML 2.0 that is mostly a *simplification* of YAML
1.2.
* It's about NOT doing this "Spec First".
* It's about having a common test suite that defines the language.
* It's about having matching-API, full-stack implementations in all the
languages that support JSON.
* It's about having a common YAML grammar that these implementations work
from.
* It's about starting YPath and YSchema and YTransform things
implementations from the beginning.
* It's about doing everything on GitHub and Wiki so that everyone can drive
the process, and so that nobody bottlenecks it.
* It's about writing a community book on YAML from the start.

Most importantly it's about us all doing this together, and having the
results (when they are stable) replace the current YAML stuffs. I decided to
get this started because I feel strongly that it's the right time, and I've
never been afraid to JFDI. The idea came upon me a couple days ago, spurred
by recent activity of YPath, an offline spec email, and recent completions
of cross-langauge parsing and testing frameworks I've been working on (Pegex
and TestML).

I put together some YAML2 basics, but didn't want to go any further without
inviting everyone in the community to join in. I created a "yaml2" GitHub
organization, and started forking YAML related repos into it. Everyone is
welcome to join in. I started a #yaml2 irc channel on freenode, and got
yaml2.org just in case we need it later. Most importantly I started a GitHub
wiki on a repository called YAML2. This wiki is itself a git repo so you can
clone, edit and push to it.

https://github.com/yaml2/YAML2/wiki

There's much more I have to say but I'd rather not do it on the mailing
list. That's so YAML1 ;) So I'll put that all on the wiki. I think it's fine
to discuss the meta idea of YAML2 here, but let's keep the specifics in
wiki, tests and code.

Cheers, Ingy

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