Colin Caprani wrote:
I hope you don't mind, but I've a bit more information on this:
I'm personally very familiar with MFC and it's implemenation of serialization. In fact, it was this system which inspired me to write the serialization library in the first case. So here are a couple of observations. I've often found the ms implemention often "good enough". This is especially true for those older aps which don't using STL. If they use the MS CArray, etc. It's easier to use the ms serialization since it's already done for these data structures. Many applications I do for customers are much simpler than other stuff I do and there's a strong bias to not add another (large) library so future programmers don't have to deal with a new thing to learn. On the other hand, many times the MFC serialization just can't deal with it. This often happens when I use the CDocument as a "holder" for the "real" data which is more elaborate and exploits all the modern useful machinery like that boost and STL have: variants, stl collections, ranges, signals/slots, etc. etc. This is the way I minimize my work - using MFC for the GUI, COM interfacing and all the other MS/Windows dependent stuff and a member of CDocument for all the heavy lifting. I'm very much into minimizing effort, time and tedium. Also my customers have very high expectations about what an application should do (everything) and low expectations about what it should cost (nothing since programming is "fun"). Sorry I wandered off topic. So, my ap looks like // CMy document // standard MFC implementation for open, new, etc, etc, .... // uses updateallviews and all the standard stuff CMyDocument : public CDocument { // MFC serialize void Serialize(CArchive &ar){ // now bridge to boost if(m_saving){ ostream os = ar.... ; // I forget how I do this - I might even make a new output stream boost::text_oarchive oa(os)[ oa << m_d; } else{ ... } } private: app_data m_d; }; I don't know if that helps, but there it is. It's mainly motivated by the fact that when I try to overload Open, New, I get all sorts of side-effects in MFC that I have to analize and track down. Robert Ramey