Invitation: Official Rust implementation of TOON

[johannschopplich]

Hi @shreyasbhat0! 👋

First, thank you for building rtoon! I'm really excited to see TOON being implemented in Rust – it's one of the languages I was most hoping would get community support.

The Situation

As you might have noticed, I recently created the toon-format organization to house official language implementations. As part of that effort, I reserved the toon-format crate on crates.io to prevent namespace squatting and ensure we have a clear "official" path for Rust users.

However, I don't want to implement it myself – I'm not a Rust expert, and you've already done the hard work of building rtoon.

The Proposal

I'd like to invite you to become the official maintainer of toon-format/toon-rust and migrate your rtoon implementation to the TOON organization.

Here's what this would look like:

What you'd get:

• Full maintainer access to toon-format/toon-rust
• Publishing rights to the toon-format crate on crates.io
• CI infrastructure and organization support
• Visibility as the official Rust implementation
• Listed in the main TOON repo alongside other official implementations

Goal:

• ✅ SPEC.md compliance (passes the conformance test suite)
• ✅ Comprehensive tests with good coverage
• ✅ Clear documentation and examples
• ✅ Idiomatic Rust API design
• ✅ Active maintenance and willingness to stay in sync with spec updates

Ideas:

1. Publish to crates.io as toon-format (I've already claimed the name and will add the necessary CI secrets – please setup up CI and I will add the tokens!)
2. Maybe add a deprecation notice to rtoon pointing users to the official implementation?
3. You maintain full control as the official Rust maintainer

Why This Matters

Having official, well-maintained implementations per language helps:

• Build trust with users who want a "blessed" path
• Keep implementations in sync with spec updates
• Pool testing resources and catch edge cases
• Make TOON more discoverable in each ecosystem

This is the same approach we're taking with Python (consolidating 3+ implementations) and other languages.

What I'm NOT Doing

I'm not:

• Taking over your code
• Telling you how to architect it
• Micromanaging the implementation

You'd have full autonomy over the Rust implementation – I just want to make sure there's one clear, official path for Rust users.

Async Collaboration

We can handle all of this async via issues/PRs. Once you're interested, I can:

• Set up the toon-format/toon-rust repo with CI
• Give you maintainer access
• Transfer the crates.io namespace
• Help with any migration logistics

The Ask

Are you interested in becoming the official Rust maintainer?

No pressure if you'd prefer to keep rtoon independent – I respect that. But if you're interested in collaborating, I think we could build something great together.

Thank you for your work on rtoon! 🙏

What do you think?

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P.S. – This discussion is public, so if other Rust developers want to offer perspectives or help, please chime in!

[shreyasbhat0]

Hey @johannschopplich

Thank you so much for reaching out — and I really appreciate the kind words about rtoon!
It’s great to see TOON evolving into a well-structured ecosystem with official language implementations under the toon-format organization.

I’d be genuinely happy to collaborate on this and be a maintainer .

I’ve already opened a PR. And would be adding notice to rtoon and point it to here .

Thanks again for the opportunity.

[johannschopplich]

Perfect! Happy to have you on board.

Since you're the only maintainer – I will review the PRs for now (basically waving them through). I hope we find another contributor in the future!

[shreyasbhat0]

Sure .
That works .Thanks🙂

[johannschopplich]

@JadJabbour I see you've built a TOON implementation as well! Would you like to join the team? Then you could build in this repo together. What do you say? @shreyasbhat0 Would you be open to a collaboration?

[shreyasbhat0]

@johannschopplich That sounds great — I’d definitely be open to collaborating!