
On JSON and REBOL - draegtun
http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r?view=0522
======
pan69
"REBOL strongly influenced the design of JSON."

What does that mean? That Brendan Eich modeled JavaScript Object Notation
(which is an integral part of the JavaScript language) using REBOL as an
example?

~~~
draegtun
JSON was _specified|devised_ by Douglas Crockford (and not Brendan Eich) -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON>

Crockford was a friend of Carl Sassenrath (creator of Rebol) and cited Rebol
as an influence in the design of JSON -
<http://www.rebol.com/article/0423.html>

~~~
pan69
What I'm saying was that JSON was already an integral part of Javascript even
though it wasn't named JSON at the time. I.e. what JSON is today already
existed in Javascript before Crockford turned it into a spec. Crockford took
an existing Javascript construct and turned it into a standalone spec. So,
since JSON already existed in Javascript (but wasn't named so), how could
REBOL have been an influence on it?

~~~
rgchris
Literal notation utilised by JSON was indeed a part of Javascript, however
JSON was a subset of Javascript specifically selected for cross-language
messaging; by necessity pruning the parts of literal Javascript unsuited for
this purpose and in part conforming to identical literals in other languages
(see <http://www.json.org/fatfree.html>). It's unclear how without the limits
set by the JSON spec that literal Javascript would have become a popular
exchange format.

It took Crockford's Rebol-influenced eye to spot the potential for a
minimalist though somewhat expressive exchange format based on elementary
block structures, and near-genius to carve it out of the spartan confines of
the Javascript syntactic swamps. Sadly not being Rebol, JSON does not include
words (see 'Reserved Words' <http://javascript.crockford.com/survey.html>),
dates, urls, email addresses (see <http://www.rebol.com/rebolsteps.html>); and
will forever be burdened with comma-delimiters.

~~~
hostilefork
JSON also does not permit comments, which makes it unsuitable for many
applications such as handwritten configuration files. :-/ It would be tempting
to use JSON for such things, but it requires too much markup...and without
comments it's pretty dead in the water. Things like YAML have been succeeding
in this space instead...much to the annoyance of Rebol advocates.

But there is some potential for copying the successful aspects of these
formats, while bringing back that Rebol flair with REN (REadable Notation):

<https://github.com/rebolek/REN>

Just basically Rebol "taking back JSON" and competing with the likes of YAML.
We'll have to wait and see where that goes.

