Re: YAML 1.2/1.* vs YAML 2.0

Just read through this whole thread. I chose to reply to this post, because
it really pleased me...

Oren, I am very much in alignment with your views. Maybe that's because we
worked so hard together on this for so long. (to everyone else, Clark, Oren
and I fought tooth and nail on every last decision of what YAML landed on,
for nearly 5 years straight!).

A couple points to reiterate:

   - YAML is a *serialization language* (that just happens to be a popular
   config format)
      - Complex keys exist in modern language object graphs. YAML can and
      will continue to be able to serialize them.
      - JSON is not a serialization language. It is a very useful 90+% data
      interchange format.
   - The > fold indicator is in more widespread use now than when I wrote
   up the stuff in 2011
      - I think we can still improve it, but something very close to its
      semantic is needed
   - The eYAML is none of my ideas.
      - It was all mofosyne, who had a ton of energy last year, but was
      very new to the space. I worked with him at length.
      - I countered with something I called Yadda:
      https://github.com/ingydotnet/yadda

I'm also keen on Andrey's spirit to simplify YAML, although it will take a
ton of work. Making stuff simple is the most difficult thing you can do!

Since there is a bit of interest, I'll try to garden the wiki this weekend
to bring it to a more modern view.

Cheers, Ingy


On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 9:51 PM, Oren Ben-Kiki <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 6:21 AM, Peter Murphy <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> As I observe, the problems that people have is with the multiplicity
>> of ways to present the same information, and the issues some of those
>> ways have.
>
>
> +1. Note that some of the examples (such as the boolean problem) is due to
> people using YAML1.1 and ignoring the pretty explicit YAML1.2
> failsafe/JSON-compatible/"Core" schema spec. A "Core"-schema YAML1.2 parser
> does not have this specific problem. But some problems (such as the folded
> blocks) remain.
>
>  The removal of composite keys requires a change to the YAML _content
>
>> model_, on the other hand, and so it becomes impossible to represent
>> the same thing that used to be representable in YAML.
>
>
> +1 again. IMVHO we will not drop composite keys. If you don't want them,
> don't use them. If your application doesn't support them, reject inputs
> that use them. But they are there for those who do need them and I don't
> see them going away.
>
> IMO YAML2.0 w/o composite keys isn't YAML2.0, it is JSON2.0. If that's
> what people need - great! there have been several attempts to move the JSON
> spec forward, and doing so while keeping YAML compatibility in mind would
> be nice; we should ensure that YAML2.0 would be a superset of JSON2.0 - if
> there is such a thing.
>
> In 10 years, we basically didn't hear any request for truly new features,
> which I take to mean that the basic design is good - especially the data
> model. I don't want to touch that part. We did get a lot of complaints
> about the difficulty of parsing, and people just didn't use some of the
> stuff (folded blocks, %TAG, ...).
>
> So the way I see it, YAML2.0 should be basically YAML1.2 minus the stuff
> that people turned out not to use in the past 10 years, with the goal of
> making parsing as simple as we can make it. I'd like to spend some time on
> figuring out how to make the spec friendly for parser generators, for
> example. The main problem is the pesky indentation rules. Maybe we can do
> something about that.
>
> I very much like Ingy's proposal of replacing folded blocks with something
> based on ".
>
> I think lots of people use | blocks though (I certainly do) so I'd be
> careful modifying that. I like the idea of dropping the explicit
> indentation integer and replacing it with the location of the | on the next
> line - that's a much more elegant, and I don't think people use |2 that
> much. We might be able to simplify/get rid of chomping while at it, by
> using "-alone-in-the-next-line for a chomped literal block, so we'll be
> able to get rid of |- as well. That's probably not used much either.
>
> Getting rid of directives also makes sense - basically, keeping the same
> data model but saying "this data is provided externally to the parser, we
> don't mandate how this is done". This would simply the syntax.
>
> Doing some sort of schema language would help - "we don't mandate how the
> data is specified, but a recommended way is to allow loading a schema file
> in this format". Again, this needs more thought.
>
> There are probably other proposals along these lines. We should spend some
> time actively polling people for ideas. "What is your least favorite part
> of YAML, and how would you fix it".
>
> Making it explicit the type repository is 1.1 and not 1.2 and people
> shouldn't use it is also important. It is creating misconceptions (repeated
> in this thread), e.g. about booleans, which are simply not true in 1.2 -
> but implementations get it wrong anyway.
>
> An actually useful ANSI-C reference implementation (some efficient
> low-level tokenizer/streaming parser), usable as a basis for higher level
> libraries, would be great.
>
> For me, that's basically "it".
>
> This means YAML2.0 would "just work out of the box" for "almost all" the
> configuration files out there (and there are a *lot* of these). I think
> that's important. We did something similar when moving from 1.1 to 1.2.
>
> Ingy may have a very different notion for YAML2.0 though - if so, I'd call
> the above YAML1.3. I don't see it as a revolution, I see it as an
> evolution. We should reawaken Clark and see what his take on this is...
>
> Have fun,
>
> Oren Ben-Kiki
>
>
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