diff --git a/core/src/processing/data/IntDict.java b/core/src/processing/data/IntDict.java
index 9c9a2b943..dd6337b7e 100644
--- a/core/src/processing/data/IntDict.java
+++ b/core/src/processing/data/IntDict.java
@@ -660,8 +660,22 @@ public class IntDict {
   }
 
 
+  /**
+   * Return this dictionary as a String in JSON format.
+   */
+  public String toJSON() {
+    StringList items = new StringList();
+    for (int i = 0; i < size(); i++) {
+      items.append("\"" + keys[i] + "\": " + values[i]);
+    }
+    return "{ " + items.join(", ") + " }";
+  }
+
+
   @Override
   public String toString() {
+    return getClass().getSimpleName() + " size=" + size() + " " + toJSON();
+    /*
     StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
     sb.append(getClass().getSimpleName() + " size=" + size() + " { ");
     for (int i = 0; i < size(); i++) {
@@ -672,5 +686,6 @@ public class IntDict {
     }
     sb.append(" }");
     return sb.toString();
+    */
   }
 }
diff --git a/core/todo.txt b/core/todo.txt
index 58d325378..59916d171 100644
--- a/core/todo.txt
+++ b/core/todo.txt
@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 X some Table cleanup based on other CSV parsing work
 X use StandardCharsets.UTF_8 instead of getting encoding by name
 X PApplet.main(Blah.class) now works
+X add toJSON() method to IntDict
+_   do the same for the other data classes
+_   note the difference between this and toJSONObject() or toJSONArray()
+_   or is that the better way to handle it? hm
 
 
 _ Can't render PGraphics object using image() within a PDF