Hi community, This memo is a proposal to implement a compact and reversible (lossless round-trip) JSON interface for multi-dimensional data and in particular for Numpy (see issue #12481). The links to the documents are at the end of the memo. The JSON-NTV (Named and Typed value) format is a JSON format which integrates a notion of type. This format has also been implemented for tabular data (see NTV-pandas package available in the pandas ecosystem and the PDEP12 specification). . The use of this format has the following advantages: - Taking into account data types not known to Numpy, - Reversible format (lossless round-trip) - Interoperability with other tools for tabular or multi-dimensional data (e.g. pandas, Xarray) - Ease of sharing Json format - Binary coding possible (e.g. CBOR format) - Format integrating data of different nature The associated Jupyter Notebook presents some key points of this proposal (first draft): Summary: - introduction - benefits - multi-dimensionnal data - Multi-dimensional types - Format JSON - Using the NTV format - Equivalence of tabular format and multidimensional format - Astropy specific points - Units and quantities - Coordinates - Tables - Other structures This subject seems important to me (in particular for interoperability issues) and I would like to have your feedback before working on the implementation. Especially, - do you think this “semantic” format is interesting to use? - do you have any particular expectations or subjects that I need to study beforehand? - do you have any examples or test cases to offer me? And of course, any type of remark and comment is welcome. Thanks in advance ! links: - Jupyter notebook : https://nbviewer.org/github/loco-philippe/Environmental-Sensing/blob/main/py... - JSON-NTV format : https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-thomy-json-ntv-02.html - JSON-NTV overview : https://nbviewer.org/github/loco-philippe/NTV/blob/main/example/example_ntv.... - NTV tabular format : https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-thomy-ntv-tab-00.html#name-tabular-str... - NTV-pandas package : https://github.com/loco-philippe/ntv-pandas/blob/main/README.md - NTV-pandas examples : https://nbviewer.org/github/loco-philippe/ntv-pandas/blob/main/example/examp... - Pandas specification - PDEP12 : https://pandas.pydata.org/pdeps/0012-compact-and-reversible-JSON-interface.h...