More on property_tree: It would be nice if the default translator did not use the << and >> operators by default. In my software, I use << to stream a debugging description of an object -- so it is useless for archiving purposes. Instead, the detail::translator could define and use template <class Ch, class T> inline void writeToStream(std::basic_ostream<Ch> &os, const T &value) { os << value; } template <class Ch, class T> inline void readFromStream(std::basic_istream<Ch> &is, T &value) { is >> value; } Then clients of the library would have more flexibility in implementing the streaming operations by providing specializations of these functions. (These functions would be used in place of the stream >> and << calls in detail::extractor::operator() and it's specializations). Is this list the right place for these requests or is there a better place to put them so that they get tracked?