[XML-SIG] Recent CVS changes

[Ken MacLeod]

Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> writes:

> Ken MacLeod wrote:
> > 
> > Another is LDO's XML serialization:
> > 
> >   <http://www.ntlug.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/LDO/ldo-xml.dtd>
> > 
> > The DTD itself has basic specs and I hope to complete more docs over
> > Christmas vacation.
> 
> Can you people please explain why we need all of these competing
> proposals? XML-RPC looks like a superset of WDDX (in that it has a concept
> of "method"). It could be described as a superset of WDDX, couldn't it? 
> 
> Can't we all just get along?

Serialization in LDO is modular, and LDO includes binary and XML
serialization specs that are a ``best fit'' for how LDO handles
distributed objects.  Python's `pickle' and Perl's `Storable' also
work well within LDO for python-to-python or perl-to-perl messages.

I would be glad to support WDDX serialization too, or in place of
LDO's XML serialization, but it's not a ``best fit'' for LDO right
now, in part because it's not specified how to handle binary values
(using base64 for example), null values are explicitly unsupported,
there's no type or class attributes, no support for object references,
and no support for non-string keys in dictionaries (structures).

> LDO looks like a *subset* of WDDX except for the REF element type. 

LDO's XML serialization may have fewer tags, but it does support all
the semantics described above.  I would say it is actually a superset,
because everything in WDDX can be encoded in LDO's XML serialization,
but the reverse is not true.

-- 
  Ken MacLeod
  ken@bitsko.slc.ut.us