Re: NSKeyedArchiver implementation...

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 9 Sep 2004, at 19:13, Fred Kiefer wrote:

> Gregory John Casamento wrote:
> >  What I believe is
> > slightly better is to implement keyed archiving in our own way and 
> > provide a
> > way to be compatible with MOSX, if necessary. :)
> > We can do this by way of an XSLT transformation.   XSLT will allow a
> > transformation from the XML format which is produced for Apple 
> > archives to be
> > directly translated into XML needed for the 
> > NSKeyedArchiver/NSKeyedUnarchiver
> > format.   This has serveral advantages:
> > 1) It will allow us to complete the implementation of GNUstep's own 
> > XML
> > formatted archives more quickly and in a less kludgy manner.
> > 2) We will not need to rely on the limited nature of some of the 
> > tools which
> > are provided in NSKeyedArchiver/NSKeyedUnarchiver for "translation" 
> > of Apple
> > archives.
> > 3) It allows us to make our XML implementation as robust as we wish 
> > without
> > being bound by Apple's implementation.
> > It should be possible for us to add some extensions to the API which 
> > will allow
> > the user to specify a stylesheet to be used.  It may also allow some 
> > other
> > types of things to take place in the transform which may be useful.
>
> At first I thought of this as a very nice solution, doing our own 
> stuff, while still being able to exchange with Apple applications 
> would be great. It would even free us of update problems for either 
> side, as incompatible changes would just result in small changes on 
> the XSLTs.
> Than I tried to imagine an XSLT for this and here my fantasy failed me.
> So for example how would you transform any of the actual problematic 
> bits you listed above?

Yes, my feeling too ... I would expect that producing archives in a new 
gnustep specific format and trying to use xslt to convert between that 
and macos-x format would be a *LOT* more work than just using the 
macos-x format to start with.

> Sorry, but my feeling is that this proposal would mean "lets do our 
> own stuff now and care for Apple compatibility later", that is never. 
> My question here is, what good would keyed archiving be, if it doesn't 
> allow the exchange with Apple applications?

Well, keyed archiving does have its advantages, but we had our own 
keyed coding in GNUstep for years before Apple introduced their 
version, and pretty much abandoned it because nobody used it.  So I 
think it's clear that the advantages of keyed archiving are, on their 
own, not enough for people to bother adopting it.  The aim of archive 
interchangability between gnustep and macosx is much more enticing for 
most people.

I'm against writing any new keyed archiving code which is not macosx 
compatible ... I would go so far as to say that a keyed archiving 
method which is not compatible with macosx is a bug.