add some readme info

README.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 This is a toy configuration language.  If you want to know why, see the [WHY](WHY.md) doc.
 
-# stability
+# Instability
 
 This isn't even remotely stable.  Don't use this in an actual project, I
 promise you I will break this.
@@ -17,16 +17,16 @@ format in Go projects.  The syntax is fairly similar, with a few changes:
 - support for complex numbers.  The only reason I included this is that it's
   included in the text/template package in the standard library and I stole the
   number-parsing code from that library.
+- bare strings.  Support here is somewhat up in the air.  Inside of bare
+  strings, the characters [, ], ;, :, {, and } must be escaped, because each of
+  those can terminate a bare string.
 - comments.  There are no comments in JSON and that's incredibly annoying.
   Moon has them.
 - variables.  In moon, you can make a reference to a value that was already
   defined.
 - hidden variables.  This sounds really dumb but it quickly became apparent
   that if you're using variables to compose something, those variables end up
-  polluting the namespace of the moon document.  Variables whose name starts
+  polluting the namespace of the moon document.
-  with a period are hidden; they are only valid in the context of the moon
-  document in which they appear, and they are not accessible to the host
-  program.
 - a command-line tool.  I'm sure these exist for json but there's no official
   "this is the tool, that one isn't" decree.
 - something kinda like xpath that lets you select elements in a document.
@@ -77,23 +77,38 @@ Moon defines the following types:
   These are strings:
 
 ```
-"this one"
+this is a bare string
-'that one'
+"this is a quoted string"
+'this is also a quoted string'
+
+inside of a bare string, "quotes" don't need to be escaped
+but semicolons \;, colons \:, parens \( and \), brackets \[ and \] and braces \{ \} need to be escaped.
 ```
 
-  You can use single or double quotes.  Escape quotes with a backslash.
+  You can use single or double quotes.  Escape quotes with a backslash.  Quoted
+  strings may contain newlines and special characters.
+
+  The following characters are special characters: `:`, `;`, `[`, `]`, `#`,
+  `{`, and `}`.  The colon is used to separate a key from a value.  The
+  semicolon is used to terminate a bare string.  A newline will also terminate
+  a bare string.  A close bracket must be a special string in order to support
+  a bare string being the last element of a list, without requiring that you
+  add a semicolon after it.  An open bracket doesn't need to be a special
+  character, but I made it a special character to be symetrical with the close
+  bracket.  The same logic applies for braces.
+
 - objects: or maybe you call them hashes, objects, or associative arrays.  Moon
   calls them objects, but you'd never know it because it's actually the
   `map[string]interface{}` type in Go, which is effectively the same thing.
-  Unlike json objects, and unlike strings, the keys in objects are not quoted.
+  Keys are bare strings, but object keys may not contain spaces.
-  Also there are no commas between the values but I'm not sure I like this yet,
+
-  so it might change.  These are some objects:
+  These are some objects:
 
 ```
 {name: "jordan" age: 28}
 {
     one: 1
-    two: "two is also a number"
+    two: two is also a number
     pi: 3.14
 }
 ```
@@ -105,11 +120,60 @@ Moon defines the following types:
 ```
 [1 2 3]
 [
-  "one"
+  one
   2
   3.14
 ]
+
+# this is a list of three elements
+[moe; larry; curly]
+
+# this is a list of one element
+[moe larry curl]
+```
+
+- variables: a variable is indicated with a `@` character.  A variable may
+  refer to any key that has already been defined in the current moon document.
+  Here is an example of how you would use a variable:
+
+```
+original_value: this is the original value, which is a string
+duplicate_value: @original_value
 ```
 
+  If the name of a key begins with an `@` character, it is a private key.  A
+  private key may be referenced in the rest of the moon document, but it is not
+  available anywhere outside of the moon document parser.  This is useful for
+  the composition of larger, nested values, without polluting the document's
+  root namespace.  Here is an example of a private key:
 
+```
+@my_private_key: a great value
+my_public_key: @my_private_key
+```
+
+  This isn't particularly useful for simple values, but consider the following:
+
+```
+@prod: {
+    label: production
+    hostname: prod.example.com
+    port: 9000
+    user: prod-user
+}
+
+@dev: {
+    label: development
+    hostname: dev.example.com
+    port: 9200
+    user: dev-user
+}
+
+servers: [@prod @dev]
+```
 
+  The only key in the root namespace of the document is `servers`; the
+  individual server configs are considered only a part of the document.  Since
+  we know that these values are private to the document itself, we know we are
+  free to modify them as we see fit, without affecting how the host program
+  sees the moon document.