About N.O.N. (Next Object Notation)

Design Philosophy

• Readable by humans first, deterministic enough for machines.
• Reduce punctuation noise from JSON without losing type fidelity.
• Treat data files as authored artifacts, not merely transport payloads.
• Support engine-native literals where JSON is awkward.

What N.O.N. Is Good At

• Gameplay/world config files.
• Prompt-friendly structured payloads.
• Readable metadata for sites/apps/tooling.
• Schema-driven content where authors edit by hand.

Format Snapshot

@sector: ultrama_zone_1
@type: outdoor
    gravity: 9.8
    ambient_light: #202040
    spawn_points:
        - pos: (10, 0, 10)
          radius: 5.0

Tradeoffs

• Indentation errors are easier to make than JSON bracket errors.
• Schema/validation tooling becomes more important.
• Round-trip formatting must be clearly defined for stable diffs.

Compare to JSON

• Less visual noise for authored configs.
• Better ergonomics for nested content and repeated entries.
• Needs a parser contract and style guide to stay consistent.

Compare to TONL

• N.O.N.: authoring-friendly, engine literals, minimal stack.
• TONL: compression/query/indexing oriented.
• Both can coexist depending on pipeline needs.