John Torjo wrote:
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.
I assume you suggest something like: - if an object can be serialized, use that for output - if not, use default (operator<<)
This depends on the meaning of "can be serialized". If that means, "has the method 'serialize'", then right, I suggest to use it. If that mean using the serialization library (say, text_archive or xml_archive), then no. I'd like to use outfmt without including all serializaton headers. I want to be able to output all of my classes, and I don't want to include serialization headers in all of my own headers. - Volodya