Re: NSKeyedArchiver/NSKeyedUnarchiver (was Re: GModel decision)

[Gregory John Casamento]

Kazu/Richard,

--- Kazunobu Kuriyama <kazunobu.kuriyama@nifty.com> wrote:
> Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
   < snip >
> 
> This is the point I'd like to make sure of.  Does "be MacOS-X 
> compatible" mean that archives resulting from the new GNUstep's 
> keyed archiver could be used with both GNUstep and MacOS-X, or, 
> its format (e.g., the names of keys) would be merely the
> same as that of MacOS-X?

For full compatibility all information in GNUstep archives would need to
precisely mirror the information archived by Apple.

> If it means the latter, the work for modifying 
> initWithCoder:/encodeWithCoder:
> is expected to be tedious but straightforward. 
> 
> For the former, however, these methods must inherently know the mapping from
> a GNUstep's object graph to the corresponding MacOS-X's one and vice versa,
> which I think is the point you suggested when you replied to my note on
> the statistics.  Dealing with the mappings leads to the problems Gregory
> pointed out.

I've said enough on this point in previous mails.

> Though I rather prefer the former compatibility if possible, I'm not 
> sure how
> the difficulty is overcome.  That's why I made a bitter compromise from the
> beginning.  Too soon to give it up?

We should at least look into it to see what the challenges are, in addition to
those that I've mentioned.
 
> > If there is a pressing need for keyed archive support to be added to
> > a class in a non-macosx-compatible manner, the incompatible version
> > could be controlled by the user defaults system.   My guess is that
> > this would rarely be necessary ... but that is just a guess, I don't 
> > think
> > we will really know until we try writing new coding/decoding stuff. 
> 
> I don't think anybody likes an avoidable non-compatiblity.  IMHO, the 
> problem
> is rather a matter of feasibility and maintenability.

Yes.  This is my major concern.
 
> > So as far as I can see, adding keyed archiving gives us the opportunity
> > to move towards portable/compatible archives without breaking any
> > existing stuff.
> 
> Indeed, it's a good opportunity.

Later,

=====
Gregory John Casamento -- CEO/President Open Logic Corp.
-- bheron on #gnustep, #linuxstep, & #gormtalk ---------------- 
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