On Jun 6, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:

> I'd really like to have a binary plist format -- passing around large
> ascii representations of data seems "ugly" to me.  Especially across a
> kernel/user boundary.

I'm working on one (compatible with Apple's) in all that spare time I  
have.  (Sorry, finishing the remodel of my new house has higher  
priority.)

> This would also discourage folks from trying to "inspect" or  
> "inspect &
> modify" encoded plists.  The encoded (packed) plist format should  
> be closed.

XML plists are explicitly designed to be human readable / editable.   
They're not "packed" so much as "serialized".

> At some level, I think it is also true that versioning would not be
> needed if the API boundary for applications was at the library level.
> But since we provide compatibility for all static binaries, *every*
> interface like this has to be versioned.  Gak.

How do you mean?  One of the beauties of dictionaries is that if you  
need to add keys, old code continues to work because they simply  
ignore all the new information.  You lose if you REMOVE keys, but...

-- thorpej