Robert Ramey wrote:
Vladimir Prus wrote:
A particularly interesting question is how the proposed library overlaps with serialization. When outputting vector<Function> I'd prefer the content of 'Function' to be outputted too, preferably by describing the members with the 'serialize' method. And the question is if I can use outfmt library, or have to use the serialization library? The serialization library is pretty large, so, I'd like outfmt to be able to output UDT which have 'serialize' defined. IMO, vector<some_UDT> is a very common case, maybe even more common than vector<pair<int, int> >.
If one had nothing else to do, he could make a derivation of one of the existing archives (e.g. text_archive) that would "annotate" the serialization.
It's possible, but the simple-minded "output_operator_helper_which_uses_the_serialize" method will be very simple and have much less dependencies than "text_archive".
This might be useful for debugging or other purposes. On the other hand, I just use the xml_archive for that purpose now and its fine (although a little verbose). It also plays nice with XML browsing tools. So that's handy.
Yes, it's a little verbose.
My real observation is that I see this as orthogonal to serialization and that it should remain that way. I don't seen any real overlap now except that there might be a couple of instances where either one might do. I think even these would be rare cases. I would resist any idea to intertwine these concepts.
I'm lost. What are "these concepts"? What I propose is that the "serialize" method be usable by the outfmt library to generate more usable output. No other link between the two libraries is suggested. - Volodya