----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Bray" <>
To: "xml-dev mailing list" <>
> Right now genx does output to a FILE *. Several have suggested that it
> should do output via an abstracted callback. This sounds kind of
> seductive, and is indeed much more general, and would be no biggie to
> implement, but the more I think about it the less I like it. So at the
> moment I'm leaning to sticking with FILE * for the following reasons:
>
> 1. The sweet spot for XML is interchange, and FILE * is a nice general
> basis for almost all kinds of interchange.
Even when you want to feed your output through an encoding converter first?
> 2. If you're going to build an XML instance in memory, wouldn't it be
> more natural to pull together a DOM or your own private data structure
> and then serialize it in one fell swoop?
What do you mean?
I usually serialize from some application specific object model.
DOM would require to conver to to another object model first,
and then use lots of memory as well.
> 3. This lowers the barrier-to-entry to implementers, who are going to
> see genxStartDocument(genxWriter w, FILE * file) and say "oh yeah I
> know what to do" as opposed to having to figure out another flavor of
> I/O abstraction and write a stub of some kind.
You could have a FILE callback function included in the implementation.
So when setting the callback, the programmer passes a pointer to this function
and as a writerTarget he passes the FILE pointer.
> So this would be a good time to say "I'd use genx for XXX, but if it
> sticks with FILE * I'm not going to be able to use it because of YYY".
Serializing over the network? There a various APIs for that, could even
be custom APIS or CORBA/DCOM.
Karl
