When developing software without any user interface, a lot of settings are hidden in configuration files. (e.g. machine parameters, ip addresses, login names, file paths, etc.)
Occassionally these settings need to be changed by an end user.
But editing a JSON, YAML, XML, or even plain INI file is often quite challenging for the average user.
I am looking for an editor (Windows) that can open such a config file, and allow an end user to edit certain sections, while preventing them from destrying the syntax of the config file.
The editor would be configured in advance by me, for that specific config file.
The editor should be able to
- open and display a config file in one of the standard formats, preferably JSON (But an editor for YAML, TOML, XML would be fine as well)
- allow the user to change urls, numerical values, strings, key-value-pairs, tables, etc. contained in the config file
- allow copy/paste of values, e.g. to or from excel
- prevent the user from accidentally changing the overal structure of the file, or generating a syntactically invalid file. Or at least make it slightly harder to screw up.
- ideally also prevent some semantic errors, like entering a value that is too large
- ideally display some mouseover help text for each value that can be changed
- Which parts of the file are modifyable, and which help text is displayed, should either be defined within the config file itself, or within a secondary config file.
An open source tool, that can be adapted to custom requirements, would be strongly prefered.
