Re: What is the status of NSPropertyListBinaryFormat_v1_0?

[Fred Kiefer]

Hi Derek,

Derek Zhou wrote:
> I want to ask about the status of NSPropertyListBinaryFormat_v1_0 in
> the class of NSPropertyListSerialization. Is it reversed engineered
> from the apple's file or made froma a spec? 

I did reverse engineer the format from a few binary files somebody did
send me and improved it a bit with additional binary NIB files taken
from the web. So there surely are cases, where the binary format is
still wrong. I remember one case from about a year ago, where somebody
could prove that big numbers where handled wrongly. Similar errors might
still be hidden in the code, as it has only been tested with limited
examples.
The bigger problem is that this code (as the one for the XML format)
relies on keyed coding being implemented correctly for the used classes.
This is not always the case. I implemented keyed decoding for some of
the GUI classes, but keyed coding is still missing for most classes even
there and for most BASE classes we have neither.

> How good is the
> compatibility with apple? This is important to the gnustep developers
> because this looks like the only way to exchange data (efficiently)
> with OSX. In my limited use (as of base 1.11.1) it seems to be not as
> robust as NSPropertyListGNUstepBinaryFormat. Are people actively
> working on this?

Nobody is currently active on this format or on keyed coding as a whole,
but when requirements and bugs pop up, I am sure Richard, Gregory or I
will have a look and try to help. I would suggest that you give it a
try, if you find a problem report it, but also try to reproduce it with
the XML format. If it shows up there as well it's most likely a problem
with keyed coding, if it doesn't it's local to the binary format.

Fred