Hi Chris,
Good to hear from you.
I find the optional quotes to be very convenient. I also find Pivot's support
for single quotes very convenient, and this is also not an official part of the
JSON spec. Consider a style declaration without that support:
<BoxPane styles="{"horizontalAlignment":"center",
"verticalAlignment":"center", ...}"/>
vs.
<BoxPane styles="{horizontalAlignment:'center', verticalAlignment:'center',
...}"/>
> I don't think Pivot is doing the greater community any favours by
> encouraging this offshoot of JSON. Pivot either needs to fix it, or call it
> something else, because as it stands (in its weak undelimited form) it's not
> JavaScript Object Notation, it's Pivot Object Notation.
JavaScript itself supports the same optional syntax - single quotes or no
quotes (when the key only contains valid identifier characters). Would you say
that JavaScript has done the software community a disservice? Would you call
JavaScript's use of JSON "JavaScript Object Notation"? Oh, wait... ;-)
When JSON is produced and consumed exclusively by machine, requiring quotes may
not seem like a big deal. So I can see your argument with respect to the REST
article, since it is about web services. However, JSON is often authored by
hand in Pivot, and as such needs to be more convenient.
I personally think the JSON spec itself should make quotes optional, and
possibly also support single quotes. Enforcing quotes when they are not
strictly necessary is needlessly draconian.
G
