well, I was thinking of something very, very, very simple.
actually, the mpd file already carries all needed information,
just in a non-accumulated way.
so probably json is a little overkill, since it re-invents what mpd already is.
the csv, accumulating the part counts, however, could be used in creating statistics, inventories, etc.
http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/7740-1
for this purpose, a simple accumulation by counting parts would be sufficient IMHO:
a simple sequence of lines, each line consisting of
count;part_number;color;comment
, the last element being optional. So, a model consisting of
1x part 4083 in black,
28x part 3005 in yellow,
28x part 3005 in red
would have this csv representation:
1;4083;0
28;3005;14
28;3005;4
actually, it is not really "comma-separated", but instead "semicolon-separated",
but that variant in many programs is understood. maybe the tool can have an option for choosing the separation char.
we could also use
1,4083,0
28,3005,14
28,3005,4
, or we could use the filename instead of the part number:
1,"4083.dat",0
28,"3005.dat",14
28,"3005.dat",4
please consider all this just as an inspiration.
Having such a tool would prevent set inventories sites
from having to invent an own, proprietary format again and again.
actually, the mpd file already carries all needed information,
just in a non-accumulated way.
so probably json is a little overkill, since it re-invents what mpd already is.
the csv, accumulating the part counts, however, could be used in creating statistics, inventories, etc.
http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/7740-1
for this purpose, a simple accumulation by counting parts would be sufficient IMHO:
a simple sequence of lines, each line consisting of
count;part_number;color;comment
, the last element being optional. So, a model consisting of
1x part 4083 in black,
28x part 3005 in yellow,
28x part 3005 in red
would have this csv representation:
1;4083;0
28;3005;14
28;3005;4
actually, it is not really "comma-separated", but instead "semicolon-separated",
but that variant in many programs is understood. maybe the tool can have an option for choosing the separation char.
we could also use
1,4083,0
28,3005,14
28,3005,4
, or we could use the filename instead of the part number:
1,"4083.dat",0
28,"3005.dat",14
28,"3005.dat",4
please consider all this just as an inspiration.
Having such a tool would prevent set inventories sites
from having to invent an own, proprietary format again and again.