I’ve just started to set up a raspi with openhab 2 with no previous experience. I’ve read everything I could find, including some topics here, but there are still some things I’m confused about. Sorry, if these questions have already been answered elsewhere…
a)
I understand that openhab2 PaperUI’s way of defining things, items etc. supersedes the ‘classic’ way to create the various files manually. I’ve done it both ways for different things and of course it works well together. I also found the .json files where PaperUI stores the things it creates.
So, if I had to edit something in an item that’s not supported by PaperUI (let’s say a tag), what’s the “right” way to do that? Scrap the whole definition in PaperUI and create a manual one using the Designer? Or am I supposed to edit the .json file directly? Why are there two different ways to store the same results anyway?
b) Is there a description of how to escape special characters in the manual config files? I had an issue where I had to add a password to a command string (to shutdown a computer using net rpc shutdown…) and the password contains single quotation marks ( ’ ). I tried various ways to escape the " characters, that enclose the whole username/pw option, the % character and the ’ character, but it just didn’t work. In the end I resolved it by using a batch file that contains the actual command, but I still would like to know how this would have been done the right way.
c) I want to use Alexa with openhab2. I set up myopenhab.org just fine, and the connection works. I can see the items in myopenhab.org. But I don’t see any devices listed there. And, naturally, Alexa can’t find any devices either. From reading, I understand that I have to add tags to the items to make them controllable through Alexa. But I don’t understand where to add them, if I haven’t defined them using a manual config file (see question a).
d) What’s the point in using a different persistence layer? Is there any disadvantage with the default .json storage? If I use something else (and I’d be willing to install MySQL or whatever is recommended), would there be any real advantage, like performance- or otherwise?
e) Are there any additional repositories for icons in the same style as provided in the default sets?`
Thanks for your help, I’m sure there’ll be many more questions until I understand everything. And sorry for asking the obvious 
