Actually. Yes I can. See GitHub - microsoft/monaco-editor: A browser based code editor.
Microsoft provides the VS code editor component and it can connect to an autocomplete openHAB instance (GitHub - TypeFox/monaco-languageclient: A toolbox for building web applications with editors utilizing language servers.).
You don’t understand. For a reliable system configuration need to be pulled from one source of truth. We have two at the moment. If jsondb knows about a thing and your beloved text file knows about the same one, you get a conflict exception and undefined randomness happens.
JSON as a format don’t need to stay. It can also be yaml or xml. Doesn’t matter for the backend. But it need to be machine readable on start-up and writable for syncing the internal state.
I’m not sure if this will be possible without some workarounds. If openHAB and the user stores the file nearly at the same time, who wins? The user would need to create a “lock” (either by a .lock file or by locking via the UI).
Actually .thing files changed a lot and OH got stricter over time and files broke for many users (that didn’t stick to the syntax). jsonDB stores a version number and can be auto migrated.
Not necessarily paper UI. The REST interface. For the moment without a locking mechanism of jsonDB files this is the only correct way if you want to avoid OH1 technology. In theory there could also be a file watcher on the system that watches .thing files and pushes changes to the REST API.
And both get a replacement (as HTTP2 and as a timer framework feature).
openHAB has a service called “Configuration Admin” that reads all .cfg files in and stores its state periodically to .config files. The state can be influenced through files, the openHAB console and the rest interface (web UIs, android, iOS).