[tianhe]

I think the most time consuming part of the conversion is from text to digital. That's what took so long.

Interchanging formats should be relatively easy. Back in 1999, json wasn't even around.

IMO in today's API centric, and javascript ruled world. json would be a lot more useful.

[chc]

Given that it can be mechanically converted to JSON, I have a hard time seeing how JSON would be a lot more useful. "Very slightly more convenient" seems like the most we could reasonably say.

[pseingatl]

I wonder why. The U.S. Code was in electronic format by the 1980's. The Air Force had FLITE, Justice had Juris, and then there's Lexis and Nexis.