Export formats - JSON

[Andy Waddington (Cave Surveying mailbox)]

Sometime before sending, Philip Schuchardt typed (and on Thursday 2016-06-23 at 13:40:26 sent):

>  Do you ever modify your KML or SVG files by hand? They're both plain
> text XML documents.

Well, I modify .gpx files in a text editor (without syntax highlighting)
as a matter of routine because it is plain text xml and editing it is dead
easy. I have also been known to edit those same tracklogs in a mapping
application with a graphical interface. In some respects it is more
intuitive, but typically more time-consuming than the hand-editing.
Often I will pick points in the graphical application to identify which
bits of the xml to hack in the text editor which is often the most
efficient way to accomplish my goals.

The point is that all these ways are available to me because xml, at
least as used in .gpx files, is sufficiently well structured and readable
that it is perfectly possible to edit in plain text. Not everyone will
want to, but the aim should be to make it possible to do so, since
then you can fix niggly little errors or add experimental features
without needing full support from your GUI application.

It's a whole lot easier than editing low-level binary drawing
files with a hex editor :-) And xml is a lot easier to hack than
(in another application entirely) GEDCOM, which is a structured
file format which looks easy to edit in plain text, but which is
incredibly error-prone owing to the cross-references to lines
very far away in the file.

So yes, xml is desirable fr its ease of editing (and there are
indeed editors designed to edit it and maintaining its
structural integrity - a bit more to learn but probably easier
than plain text if you do a lot of it).

And for those document formats Martin mentions like TeX,
plain text is great. I've always preferred What You See Is A
Description Of What You Will Eventually Get editors to the
newer WYSIWYG ones. It is so much easier to write little
scripts to make changes. Even direct hacking of PostScript
is easier than using some of the bloated desktop DTP
files...

Andy