"Simon Marlow"
Is a deep hierarchy really necessary?
Well, it seems useful to group codecs by purpose: Audio, Video, Compression, etc. so I believe we're not into diminishing returns at this level.
Agreed, this is sensible. But if you introduce orthogonal categories, (e.g. Codec.Binary), you need to ask whether you should have Codec.Binary.Image.Jpeg or Codec.Image.Binary.Jpeg and so on. Slightly contrieved, perhaps, but diminishing returns is just around the corner.
That's a good point. Unless anyone objects, let's reserve Codec.Text for the text encodings (UTF-8 and so on).
Sounds reasonable, too.
The options for Base64 and friends are therefore:
Codec.Binary.Base64,
I don't like it, since it's not obvious to me what property "Binary" describes. Most codecs work on binary data, don't they?
Codec.General.Base64
The only reason for a "General" category would seem to me if we only allow leaf modules.
Or even Codec.BinaryToText.Base64?
Very specific, but all right if we really need this level of specificity.
Codec.Base64,
My choice, I think.
but we could defer the decision until the library actually exists ;-)
Good point. However, with third parties building libraries (e.g. Shae et al.'s SourceForge suff), it would be nice to have a well structured hierarchy in place, so that moving stuff back and forth could be done with the least impact. -kzm -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants