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On Jan 21, 2004, at 11:03 PM, Adam Turoff wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 09:55:34PM -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
>> So, *why* do you want to serialize it? To write it to a file or down
>> a
>> pipe to some other process, I'd say.
>
> Or a remote process through a socket. Or stuffing into a database/DBM
> file.
The DBMS case I grant. Several people have said that there's an
impedance mismatch between FILE * and sockets. Weird, I try to talk to
sockets through files whenever possible, and with fflush(), FILE *
works fine.
>> Unless you're going to send it to
>> someone else, why don't you leave it in a data structure where it's
>> handy to traverse, manipulate, throw XPaths at, etc...
>
> Maybe I want to compress and/or base64 encode the data before I'm done.
> Maybe I want to transcode the output before writing it to a file.
The notion of transcoding XML *away* from UTF-8 seems highly bizarre.
But don't pipes provide a high-quality solution to 80% of the small
proportion of cases where you want to do further processing on the XML
on the way out?
> FILE * is a perfect, simple interface that hits upwards of 80% of the
> usage scenarios. My point is that it's not 100% of those scenarios,
> and
> I don't think genx should make a value judgement that these situations
> shouldn't be able to serialize to valid XML.
If I were convinced of the 80% number, the argument would be over.
Because if genx hits an 80/20 point, I'll be more than happy. David
Tolpin & others have got me worried that the non-FILE * use cases are
more than that.
> So here's the $64 question: is it more important that genx be useful in
> a wide range of situations, or is it more important that genx
> absolutely
> guarantee that it always produces valid XML or fails?
I want both of course :)
> Unless I'm missing something totally obvious, using FILE * creates an
> impedence mismatch with raw sockets.
So, now I've heard two real arguments against FILE *: preparing the
text for storing into a DBMS, and using sub-file-level socket
operations. Hmph. -Tim
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