"Ingo Nolden" <nuttygraphics@gmx.de> wrote in message news:20070516202821.34C172F83E5@wowbagger.osl.iu.edu... Thank you for your answer, I understand now. I saw the code, that would use the name. But I couldn't see why it was not invoked. My actual intent is to use boost::serialization in a very special way. I am going to write a xml_archive replacement, that will enable me to read nearly arbitrary xml. *** my personal view is that this is not possible. Boost serialization archives are intimately coupled to the C++ data structures they correspond to. My first plan was to write an own serialization. After looking into boost::serialization I thought it wouldn't be clever to not use as much of this great code as possible. I especially appreciate that the serialize function does not need to be virtual, and therefore can accept a non polymorphic archive. It seems there is a great level of savvy gone into that part. *** There are tools which take an arbitrary XML schema and produce a corresponding C++ data structure. This is the opposite of Boost Serialization. If you're looking for a project, you could make a version/derivative/add-on to the xml_oarchive which produces and xml schema along with the archive itself. Then the archive would be browsable with standard xml tools. I considered this idea when making the xml_archive but concluded it wasn't necessary to meet the minimal requirements for acceptance. Robert Ramey