SNBT Support?

[ryantheleach]

http://wiki.vg/Data_Generators#NBT_converters

"There are two NBT-related data generators. One converts "SNBT" (stringified NBT - the same NBT format used in commands) to NBT; the other converts NBT into SNBT. Both look for files of the appropriate extension (.nbt or .snbt) in the input folder(s), and output them at the same relative location in the output folder."

It seems to me that the string based NBT viewer could use the .SNBT extension / labels now we know it's Mojang name, unless the text based format in MinecraftDev differs significantly.

[DenWav]

I had an argument with Grum about this actually...NBTT is not SNBT, and I'm not yet convinced it should be. SNBT has some real problems that I intentionally don't include in NBTT, but that was easier to do when it wasn't anything more than an unofficial "Mojangson". Since that decision NBTT has diverged more in ways that I consider to be improvements. There is no reason to or concept of storing and using NBTT files standalone, however, since it only makes sense as a virtual file to edit corresponding to an actual binary NBT file. That leaves me the freedom to change NBTT to anything that I want. SNBT actually has a reason for existing standalone and has a format set by Mojang.

That leaves three options that I can think of:

1. Ignore SNBT and stick with NBTT as a direct binary-NBT-only editting language
2. Support both SNBT and NBTT separately
3. Migrate NBTT over to SNBT, both in name and in structure and implementation

At face value option 3 seems the most reasonable, but the issues discussed above would need to be reconciled with or dealt with. Option 2 is probably a no-go, since I'd want the IDE auto-complete, annotations, highlighting, and hinting to be equivalently complete between both, and that's a lot of duplicate effort. Option 1 is certainly the easiest, but doesn't meet developer expectations.

Options 2 and 3 have the nice feature of supporting Mojang's format through language injection in strings, if that's ever something a mod or plugin would need to do.

With this new information in mind I may concede to the faults of "Mojangson" or SNBT as it's now called and go with option 3. It's also perfectly likely these issues have been addressed, I'll need to check the vanilla implementation in 1.13 to see if anything has changed.

[ryantheleach]

I made the issue so it was on your radar, I don't have any current need. Given the information you have said, I'd lean towards 2, as to me SNBT (ingame on previous versions) has always been about being a human input/output form of NBT, and not necessarily a 1:1 representation of NBT (unlike NBTT)

However I understand that 2. would be a feature request, for a feature I currently don't have use for.

So if there were voting on Github, this would be a neutral or 0-vote from me.

Then again, assuming I had unlimited time and resources, and were in control, I would also be tempted to add in support for minecraft command / function parsing with Brigadier, but that REALLY expands the scope of the project, so if it increases the maintenance to the point of being unmaintainable, I completely understand why you wouldn't.

I'm against 3 if SNBT doesn't correct the issues you outline.

1. seems a reasonable choice.

[stale]

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