[boost] Re: [serialize] xml archives and base 64 encoded binary data

From: Russell Hind (rh_gmane_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-25 03:43:06

Robert Ramey wrote:
> 
> Can't you use boost python to call boost serialization from within python
> via some wrapper function?  wouldn't this make the whole process totally
> painless?  I believe someone else, (I forgot whom) was doing this with good
> success.
> 

Possibly, but I don't know python at all, and the people here who do use 
it don't know it brilliantly.  The idea of using XML is so its basically 
text readable so they can understand the file format easily, but we do 
require some binary data otherwise the files would get too big so zipped 
XML seemed like a good option which is why when serialization was 
announced we decided that would help.

Personally, I'd stick to a pure binary format but describing a file 
format to them which has things like reference counting information and 
type information in it is no easy task.

One day, we plan to provide dlls to access our files which would solve 
all problems, but we have other things as higher priority for now.

Thanks

Russell