Stefan Urbanek wrote:
On 2003-01-23 01:38:41 +0100 Alan West <alan@alanz.com> wrote:
After all an XML description of the user interface should be platform
independant.
.gorm is not platform independen? If not, why? If it is because of lack of
.gorm file reader, then i do not see it as a problem of .gorm file.
.gorm (just like .nib) uses NSCoding and that is inherently library/framework dependant,
as the "coding information" on how a specific object is encoded and decoded is
part of the concrete implementation of the library/framework. Now I'm not sure whether
Gorm.app compiles agains OS X/4.2 Foundation/AppKit, but if it did, anyone creating .gorm
files with that version will create files that only work with OS X/4.2 Foundation/AppKit.
Also using libFoundation instead of base will produce a different .gorm format (unless
care was taken that they have identical coding code). This is inherent of using NSCoding
for archiving.
To have a plattform independant format for archiving objects (not merely UI objects), the "coding
information" (i.e. the knowledge of how a concrete object is represented) must be independant of the
framework/library which implements them. This could either mean the format is public and everone adheres to
it or it has to be implemented independant of the library/framework which contains the objects to be
archived. Now I haven't had time to look at Renaissance yet, but it seems promising: If all the
"coding information" is within this extension then it is the answer to technical plattform
independance for standard objects. If it also facilitates allowing custom objects, and allows the
"coding information (how to code/decode a custom object)" of custom objects to be stored and
extracted from the arcive file itself, then it is the greatest thing since IB in my view!