Serialized Lua Table Format

[oeed]

Whilst this is a fairly well known format it is still important that these details are standardised.

The format must be readable using textutils.unserialise or running the file, but it doesn't necessarily have to be made using textutils.serialise (i.e. you can strip the spacing, new lines, etc.)

These details are open for suggestion.

Extensions: .tbl MIME: text/table

[viluon]

I would use text/lua-table or application/lua-table. We aren't dealing with furniture. Plus, the *.ltbl extension should be added to the list imo.

[oeed]

I'm cool with application/lua-table, although I'm not overly keen with .ltbl quite yet.

[lyqyd]

This would be why I'd suggest using lua/data.

[oeed]

I'd agree with @lyqyd re lua/data.

How about just .data for the extension too?

[ghost]

"data" doesn't seem nearly specific enough.

I think text/lua-table is pretty good. And then for an extension, it seems fairly obvious to be, but .table or .tbl seems like a good extension.

[oeed]

As mentioned by Lyqyd in #18, I think Lua/data or /table would be best. I'd also agree with .table

[ghost]

Lua/table with .table extension.

That seems like it would work quite nicely actually. :+1:

[viluon]

I'd go with both *.tbl and *.table. Lua/table is a good idea :+1:

[oeed]

I'm not so sure that we should be recommending two extensions for a newly proposed format. We're not using Windows 3.1 anymore :wink:

[viluon]

I don't see why not, many real life standards use multiple extensions, JPEG is a good example, with .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe .jif, .jfif, .jfi as extensions.

(Also, SVG allows .svg and .svgz, BMP .bmp, .dib)

[oeed]

Those extensions probably exist due to a lack of standardisation. Having more than one extension without it being nec cedar feels like something standardisation should be preventing.

[viluon]

Uh, you are right. However, I am generally against long (full name) extensions (such as .table) and rather for abbreviations such as *.tbl. Not sure why exactly, I just think that a full name is.. unnecessary long, but having it as an alternative seems good to me. Forget about that if you think that's not a good idea though, it's just my personal preference.

[oeed]

Yeah I get what you mean @viluon. I think that because people will probably have preferences about we should list both but recommend table.

@demhydraz I think using the Lua category works best for us. They don't need to be identical to real life.

[viluon]

recommend table

Recommend *.table @oeed? Why use the longer version? Text files have *.txt by default, not *.text. Extensions usually try to be as compact as possible. Since there's (imo) no other CC format that uses *.tbl or could be confused with *.tbl I would argue that this extension is the one to use. I'd allow *.table only as an alternative.

[oeed]

Fine, we'll only use tbl

[ghost]

Unless anyone has any better ideas, lua/table and the extension .tbl are pretty good. I'm gonna start using them in my projects :P so I vote we just make that the standard.

[oeed]

Okay done. I'll create a COS now.

[viluon]

Use "Closes #X" syntax to close an issue automagically after merging a PR.

[oeed]

@viluon the issue is solved though. If we keep the issues open people will assume that it hasn't been done yet and create duplicate PRs.

[viluon]

And we'll leave those duplicate PRs until one of them is merged. Then close the duplicates and the related issue. I think that's the way to go @oeed!