(optional) significant whitespace for node children

[eugenesvk]

The FAQ correctly identifies one of the issues that YAML has with its significant whitespace

https://kdl.dev/#faq

There's also a persistent issue where very large YAML files become unmanageable, especially due to the significant indentation feature

But then for smaller files significant whitespace beats all those empty lines with closing } taking too much space to signal indentation

What about optional significant whitespace for children? Then if your document is very large, you use { } just like now, and if not - then you can use indentation to signal the same info (or you have some other rule when to use what).

[tabatkins]

In general, you don't have quite as much nesting in a KDL document in the first place, due to the richer structure of a node. That is, rather than:

{
  "type": "foo",
  "children": [
    {
      "type": "bar",
      ...
    },
    { 
      "type": "baz",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

You get the simpler:

foo {
  bar ...
  baz ...
}

So the benefit of omitting the } lines isn't nearly as large as in JSON. And by the time it is significant, you've probably crossed the line into "large document" territory, where significant whitespace becomes a footgun.

[eugenesvk]

So the benefit of omitting the } lines isn't nearly as large as in JSON

But even this repo's short example already illustrates the benefit quite nicely https://github.com/kdl-org/kdl/blob/main/examples/website.kdl

                    li "Ease of implementation"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

what a waste of precious vertical space! And this is not a "large document" territory, so no footguns

[tabatkins]

That's at the very end of the document; a bunch of lines of closing parens aren't significant there. They're not pushing useful content further apart and making it harder to take in the document as a whole.

For the rest of the document, the }-only lines are relatively few and far between.

[eugenesvk]

For the rest of the document, the }-only lines are relatively few and far between

not really, this has the same issue

                    }
                    - " page in the Github repo. Feel free to jump in and give us your 2 cents!"
                }
            }

In this doc you waste ~20% of the height on empty lines, also { aren't a pretty sight either and not very convenient to type

[zkat]

I’m pretty strongly opposed to significant indentation. This is something I very intentionally left out because I consider it an incredibly painful part of working with YAML, where a slight misalignment in a large config file can lead to serious consequences.

The aesthetics of a } cascade are insignificant in the face of genuine foot guns (and the added mental overhead of constantly having to double-check to protect yourself)

[eugenesvk]

But why are you strongly opposed to optional significant indentation? This is not meant for those huge files with footguns and overhead, but for the cleanest smaller config experience, where all the {} are just extra noise

[zkat]

Because I don’t want to complicate the grammar as much as possible, and I’d like a language that’s consistent in its syntax style.