This is part of the new customizer for saving customizer presets. We may leverage this later for managing other design metadata/dependencies, but right now you’ll only lose customizer-related information if you remove the file.

-Marius

ok.

can y'all change this be a "hidden" file in unix/linux? I know winders
doesn't have such a thing.
but that way I know the .json files are there, but I don't have to see them
all the time.

just askin'.

thanks,

Jerry

--
Extra Ham Operator: K7AZJ
Registered Linux User: 275424
Raspberry Pi and Openscad developer

The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that heralds new
discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny...".- Isaac. Asimov

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 11:19 AM, Marius Kintel marius@kintel.net wrote:

You can also turn off the experimental customizer feature - that should kill the JSON file output.

-Marius

Why does the customizer need to store anything? Isn't all the data in the
scad file in comments?

On 29 November 2017 at 18:57, Marius Kintel marius@kintel.net wrote:

Hi,

I kindly, but strongly disagree with hiding the json files.
Currently, the user base of openscad is very homogeneous:
We have programmers working on openscad and programmers/designers using
openscad.
Both groups are competent in using their computers.
Hiding the file by default would not be a big deal.

With the costumizer, we get a third user groups:
People that download models, costume them and print them without
touching the code of the model.
(see thingiverse costumizer)
Some of those users will think "code is scary" and (at first) only use
the costumizer.
They put their time into costumizing preexisting design. For those
users, the json file will be "their design" and the scad file something
like a software library to us (we need the file but do not care about
the internal working).
Sure they need to archive the scad file and json file together - but
this is the point where hiding the file would be an issue.
(Off course, we should try to get the users to touch the code - but
lowering the bar of entry for using openscad is a good thing for us.
Hiding files would obfuscate things, rising the bar of entry.)

By the way: With windows, there is also a hidden flag for files.
(most power uses set the explorer to always show hidden files)
If you really, really want to hide files in windows use Alternate data
streams on an NTFS formated drive.

with kind regards,
Michael Frey

Am 29.11.2017 um 19:32 schrieb Jerry Davis:

When you create a parameter set (or multiple parameter sets), the
costumizer stores those parameter sets in the json files.

(The scad files offcourse contains the default/"no preset selected"
parameter set)

with kind regards,
Michael Frey

Another idea is to not save the JSON file unless it contains useful
information that is different from the default. That's another way to
eliminate unwanted clutter.

On 29 November 2017 at 13:32, Jerry Davis jdawgaz@gmail.com wrote:

Yes, that sounds like reasonable default behavior.

-Marius

or if we must, and there is a compelling reason to keep from being a hidden
file, then put all json files in a json subdirectory.

I place all my stl files in a subdirectory named stl. I do that to keep my
top level openscad directory with just .scad source files.

I don't really much like that there are now .json files as well as .scad
files.

--
Extra Ham Operator: K7AZJ
Registered Linux User: 275424
Raspberry Pi and Openscad developer

The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that heralds new
discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny...".- Isaac. Asimov

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 12:55 PM, doug moen doug@moens.org wrote: