Use JSON to communincate through pipes.

The advantage of this is that it will provide a robust and extensible way to transfer metadata between stages of the pipeline, like:

The number of reactions being performed, and other user-defined variables.
Whether or not previous protocols were successfully parsed (to avoid reporting the same errors over and over).

The JSON format I'm thinking of will be something like this:

If the protocol was successfully parsed:

{
"errors": 0,
"protocol":{
"steps": [],
"footnotes": [],
"title": [],
"commands": [],
"date": [],
},
}

If the protocol wasn't successfully parsed:
```
}
"errors": 1,
"text": "...",
}
```

The main function would work something like this:

parse stdin as JSON
on error:
  parse stdin as a protocol
  on error:
    print the error
    save stdin

parse the command-line args as a protocol
on error:
  print the error
  save the text

if both protocols were successfully parsed:
  merge the protocols
  print the merged protocols as (text if stdout is a TTY else JSON)
else:
  concatenate the protocol strings
  print the concatenated text as (text if stdout is a TTY else JSON)

kalekundert / stepwise

Use JSON to communincate through pipes. #11