[XML-SIG] Marshalling

[Fred L. Drake]

Paul Prescod writes:
 > * why have a single class for marshalling and unmarshalling?

Andrew M. Kuchling writes:
 > 	My fuzzy argument for this was that I wanted the user to write
 > only a single subclass, not two of them. 

  Now's my turn to say "this is bogus".  This is bogus.  It's
entirely appropriate to separate the two functions.  This also makes
sense if you only need to support one or the other for some format not 
provided with the base package.  There is precedence for separate
classes in pickle and xdrlib.

Paul Prescod writes:
 > 3. pickle uses various magic methods: __reduce__, __getinitargs__,
 >__getstate__. Should XML marshalling support some or all of that stuff?

Andrew M. Kuchling writes:
 >  <sigh> Definitely, if it supports generic Python instances.  However, 
 > I'm less interested in reproducing pickle in XML than in providing a
 > base for supporting all the various DTDs that are popping up.

  This seems to be an issue for the specific subclasses; some systems
will support more than others, and the Python implementations should
"do the right thing" as appropriate for the specific requirements.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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