serialization of potentially cyclic data structures
stuff like JSON or XML doesn't even handle acyclic graphs well
it doesn't handle the case where the same sub object is referenced in more than one location
JSON and XML only handle strictly hierarchical data structures
@LunaDragofelis XML allows for references, we're pretty sure, so that can be used to make graphs in a relatively semantic way.
@violet @LunaDragofelis you can write graphs using XML but it's much easier to just use https://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/
@violet @LunaDragofelis nah, turtle is not that hard, especially compared to like JSON-LD or other solutions
but if ease of parsing is your concern, just serialize your graph as a flat list of triples (N-Triples) and leave it as that
@violet @LunaDragofelis practically speaking, building a (directed) graph just boils down to consuming a list of triples so the fastest and easiest syntax is to just use that as your serialization form
which is actually not that difficult to express in any language; the hard part is making it readable for humans
@Lady @LunaDragofelis Yeah, the parser section was way smaller than we expected, that grammar isn't so large that we would have trouble writing a recursive descent parser or whatever.
@Lady @LunaDragofelis Oh, actually that's way nicer than we remember. Though, we suspect it would be a task to write a correct parser for it.