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Re: Should the format used by NSArchiver be changed to XML?
From: |
Willem Rein Oudshoorn |
Subject: |
Re: Should the format used by NSArchiver be changed to XML? |
Date: |
19 Apr 2003 19:15:52 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 |
Gregory Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com> writes:
> All,
>
> As usual I have a bundle of thoughts flying around in my brain, so...
>
> Currently NSArchiver stores objects in a binary format. It wouldn't be hard
> to change NSArchiver to store purely in XML.
No it would not.
> This change would have the following effects:
>
> Advantages:
> 1) It would allow better portability of archived objects across platforms
> between different version of GNUstep.
Why? I think the NSArchiver format is already cross hardware-platform
(I mean GNUstep on other computers) and I do not think there are
problems with different versions of GNUstep.
> 2) It would be possible to write a framework on MOSX to allow compatibility
> between programs written in GNUstep and MOSX.
Yes, but just letting NSArchiver output XML does not work. Because it will
output GNUstep base/gui classes and the format is tied to the GNUstep
internals. So if you want cross platform you have to map GNUstep
classes to some platform neutral representation.
> Disadvantages:
> 1) Archives would occupy more space as some of the binary content would need
> to
> be encoded (probably using base64).
2) Will be slower.
> Please let me know if anyone has any thoughts on this.
I think the cross platform, like sharing archives between MacOSX and
GNUstep, is a good idea. But in my opinion it is better to write a
small framework/subproject that will do this for you and leave
the current behaviour alone.
Wim Oudshoorn.