On Sep 11, 2007, at 7:01 , Jules Bean wrote:
The actual format used by Data.Binary is not explicitly described in any standard (although in most cases it's moderately obvious, and anyone can read the code), and it's not formally guaranteed that it will never change in a later version (although the maintainers will no doubt try very hard to ensure it doesn't); nor does it contain any automatic support for version-stamping to ensure backwards compatibility in the face of later unlooked-for format changes.
I will just point out that, while this is one extreme, the other extreme is ASN.1. I think we want to walk the middle path instead.... -- brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery@kf8nh.com system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university KF8NH