I'd still be interested in pure-JS implementation of info-file parsers.

I don't think it's too much work (irrespective of async), we've all already hacked similar scripts before.

The hard(er) part is not writing a parser, but agreeing on a common format, as in, what do we parse INTO?

Because having things like:

{
"type": "R",
"serial": 9,
"X-line": [25,25,12]
}

seems pointless, surely we want something like:

{
 "name": "White centipede",
 "common_attribute1": "something",
}