| Format | Average Size (KB) | Size Reduction vs. SBOL |
|-------------|-------------------|--------------------------|
| SBOL XML | 12.4 | — |
| sxy.prn | 8.6 | ≈ 30 % |
| JSON (converted) | 9.2 | ≈ 26 % |
The reduction stems from the omission of XML tags and the compact representation of numeric parameters.
Example A — sxy.prn is plain text (inspect and extract): sxy.prn
Example B — sxy.prn is PostScript (convert to PDF):
Example C — sxy.prn is PCL (convert to PDF via GhostPCL): | Format | Average Size (KB) | Size Reduction vs
Example D — sxy.prn is raw binary for a label printer:
Synthetic biology relies on the exchange of design information among heterogeneous tools (CAD, simulation, laboratory automation). Existing standards such as SBOL (Synthetic Biology Open Language) provide rich semantics but suffer from verbosity and steep learning curves for non‑programmers. Moreover, many laboratory workflows still use printer‑ready (PRN) files for quick visualization and manual editing, especially in low‑resource settings. Example B — sxy
The goal of this work is to define a lightweight, human‑readable format—sxy.prn—that:
We describe the design principles, formal grammar, reference implementation, and a series of validation experiments.