Textual config is still supported. However, disc errors do not occur when creating Things and Items through the Ui. That alone degrees a ton of debugging and time specify on support on this forum. All of the options are self evident and reasonably documented in the UI as well.
Those who are motivated to do it all through text files can certainly do so. But ultimately it becomes a big time sink for both then and those of us who offer support on the forum.
There are some bugs as well that only occur with text based configs and there are some minor things mostly to do with rules, that are only possible with JSONDB configs. JSONDB configs tend to be faster as well
The improvements in the ui have largely addressed a lot of the things that drive people to using text configs. For anything that is missing, please file issues. Or continue to use text configs, but I suspect it will become more and more nitch and therefore more and more difficult to get support over time.
I’m not so sure that this is a valid feeling. The text based configs are at least one step, maybe even two steps removed from what is going on under the hood. The JSONDB fingers are actually much closer to what is going on under the hood and it much more closely represents how this information is actually represented in the data structure in memory. Given that, the forns present in the ui and the rest api itself is as close or close to what’s going on under the hood as the text configs.
the developer if there binding, with good reason I think, decided it wasn’t his job to document that. The .things done syntax is not defined but controlled by the binding developer. And when created through the UI the syntax is always right. It’s actually a significant imposition on the binding developers to document the. things done syntax and I completely understand why done may not want to do it. Especially for binding’s that support automatic discovery.
Personally, I’ve spent enough time trying to help people with. things files and won’t do it any more. It’s a huge time sink and both my time and the users time would be better spent solving home automation problems instead of syntax errors.