"Blueprint" Serialization Format Hey all, we are currently discussing about different data formats to serialize a visual data structure similar to Unreal Blueprint and I wanted to get more input from other people to get a better decision. We are currently refactoring our build-tool to provide a more flexible way of defining configurable pipelines or pipeline pieces and decided for a visual node based approach. Our nodes are of different type performing different actions and their desired input/ output pins like in this example Some pins (including output) are optional, most of the input pins have to be connected. Those processors are used in the build-tool only for now, there will be other pipelines in the future we want to configure in the same way, and are connected automatically at runtime by an Actor Approach System that scans the in- and output pins of every pre-defined processor to connect them to a task graph. This way we will keep the flexibility we currently have but gain much more control over edge cases. Because we aren't set to a single programming language, there will be some kind of compiler that is intended to process the result of our configuration and either create source code for a specific language (like C# for the tooling or C++ for the engine) or straight compile it into a plugin assembly that can be loaded from the build-tool. From this reason and because we want to keep the possibility to write those files without graphical tools, we need a syntax that is capable of handling the complexity of those node graphs but is at the same time as simple (and not binary) enougth to be editted on disk using a text editor. I already looked at the most common formats like JSON seems to be getting very complex and the minified form our code produces isn't very readble XML has been removed from the list because I think that it's grammar is too old-school and parsing is more complex than JSON YAML, TOML and AXOM seems to be an alternative because it is slim and simple but parsing it is a nightmare and I don't realy like the strict whitespace handling So long story short, does anyone of you know of an already existing "language" that would fit our needs or do you has any idea for a slim but powerfull grammar? Thanks in advance! https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Hey all, we are currently discussing about different data formats to serialize a visual data structure similar to Unreal Blueprint and I wanted to get more input from other people to get a better decision. We are currently refactoring our build-tool to provide a more flexible way of defining configurable pipelines or pipeline pieces and decided for a visual node based approach. Our nodes are of different type performing different actions and their desired input/ output pins like in this example Some pins (including output) are optional, most of the input pins have to be connected. Those processors are used in the build-tool only for now, there will be other pipelines in the future we want to configure in the same way, and are connected automatically at runtime by an Actor Approach System that scans the in- and output pins of every pre-defined processor to connect them to a task graph. This way we will keep the flexibility we currently have but gain much more control over edge cases. Because we aren't set to a single programming language, there will be some kind of compiler that is intended to process the result of our configuration and either create source code for a specific language (like C# for the tooling or C++ for the engine) or straight compile it into a plugin assembly that can be loaded from the build-tool. From this reason and because we want to keep the possibility to write those files without graphical tools, we need a syntax that is capable of handling the complexity of those node graphs but is at the same time as simple (and not binary) enougth to be editted on disk using a text editor. I already looked at the most common formats like JSON seems to be getting very complex and the minified form our code produces isn't very readble XML has been removed from the list because I think that it's grammar is too old-school and parsing is more complex than JSON YAML, TOML and AXOM seems to be an alternative because it is slim and simple but parsing it is a nightmare and I don't realy like the strict whitespace handling So long story short, does anyone of you know of an already existing "language" that would fit our needs or do you has any idea for a slim but powerfull grammar? Thanks in advance!

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