Andreas Huber wrote: [snip]
Even if one uses serialization in conjunction with e.g. network communication? "archive" doesn't sound right to me in this environment.
Good point. John Nagel's post at: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl3471000725d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=e7Thc.54263%24VK6.45375%40newssvr25.news.prodigy.com suggests he might be interested in such a "marshalling" application of this serializer library.
IMHO, "serializer" would be much better because it does not make any suggestions where the data is going to end up. However, since I seem to be the only one with these concerns I won't push this any further.
Although I haven't looked closely at serialization, I think Andreas makes a good point. In addition, it was not at first apparent to me that although: struct A{int i, char c}; is laid out in memory with c following i, the serializer could just as well store it as i following c. The secret being that only one templated serialize function is used to both store and load, with the store or load operation selected by the Archive template parameter. I admit that if I'd read last paragraph under the Free Function section, I would have realized that. This raises another minor point. At first, when I saw: ar & degrees; in member function: void gps_position::serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) I jumped to the conclusion that this was a declaration. Maybe something like: ar &= degrees; would make the statement's intention less mistakable.