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

From: Russell Hind (rh_gmane_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-25 12:11:53

Robert Ramey wrote:
> Well, I don't know python, and have never worked with boost.python.
> However, in response to your question I looked at the documentation for
> boost python.  It would seem to me that making a small function to wrap
> serialization so it could be called from boost python should be
> investigated.  It looks to me like a couple of hours work could solve save
> you days or weeks of work in parsing the XML archives.  I can't believe its
> not worth the time to at least investigate.
> 

This would then entail the python code to have duplicates of all our 
data structures wouldn't it?  A function to call serialization wouldn't 
be too hard, but it would read it in to C++ data structures wouldn't it 
(we have lists of shared_ptrs of objects etc that I've know idea how 
python could deal with these)

They only pick out the information they require, not the entire file, so 
pointing them at the relevant bits isn't too hard.

Also, you haven't met our physicists who use the python code :)  They 
tend to get fairly annoyed as soon as we mention something they can't 
understand but they like the letters 'XML' so tends to get them off our 
backs a bit as they think they might be able to handle the files :)  I 
don't think they've really thought it through that they'd still need to 
skip over loads of bits and learn what tags are what.

Cheers

Russell