JSON file for preferences and better NixOS compatibility

[the-pink-hacker]

Detailed description of your suggestion

Currently there are two places where user preferences are stored:

• launch_settings.json
• Local Storage (LevelDB)

Only two settings are stored in launch settings; other than that, everything is stored in local storage. While this works, it makes it much harder to keep multiple computers in sync with the same config. There is a current solution to this: the user can export their config as a json file. While this works for manually exporting the config, it doesn't work for automatic setups such as NixOS.

A database is stored in a binary format which makes it hard for other programs and power-users to modify it themselves. If there was just one file for storing settings that was in plain json, then something like Nix's Home Manager could easily create that file from scratch and manage it itself. This wouldn't just benefit NixOS—which most likely is a small percent of users. On any OS, the user could just simply copy a file into the config path of Blockbench and have all their preferences carried over from another computer.

I'm assuming one of the main benefits to local storage is compatibility with the web version. So, in order to maintain web support, the web version could possibly continue using local storage.