I have some xml archives that store a lot of floating point values. I would like to read these into a program that is designed to easily switch between using floats and a custom fixed-point type via a typedef. The way that would be easiest would be to add a serialize() method to the fixed-point class definition. However, the xml archive requires that I use an nvp wrapper. Since the data was originally serialized out as plain floats, the data looks something like this: <x>0.95260203</x> <y>0.87517798</y> <z>0.54323343</z> whereas, to serialize this into my fixed-point type, it would need another level of indirection due to the additional required nvp wrapper like so: <x><value>0.95260203</value></x> <y><value>0.87517798</value></y> <z><value>0.54323343</value></z> Is there a way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? The fixed-point type is convertible from (but not to) a float if that helps.