Re: Apple's Address Book File Format
Re: Apple's Address Book File Format
- Subject: Re: Apple's Address Book File Format
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2002 22:58:02 -0800
OAAI (the GlyphX folks) had a framework called OAPropertyListCoder which
did this, but it exhibited a few strange crashes after objects were
reinstantiated from persistent store. I was unable to determine what
the issue was, so I stuck with NSCoder. If anyone would like a copy of
the source, email me.
On Sunday, December 30, 2001, at 08:30 PM, Chris Hanson wrote:
At 1:58 PM -0600 12/30/01, Chilton Webb wrote:
I'd like to know why there's a proprietary format here anyway. I
thought with the proliferation of XML, we'd at least be able to store
something as simple as our contact info in such a format.
My guess is that it uses NSArchiver and NSUnarchiver for data storage.
I was originally going to use this in the application I'm working on
now because it's so darn easy, but I can't use it because the file
format isn't open. If the format isn't open, that means I'd have to
use a different format if I decide to support other platforms in the
future. And that's just not acceptable.
Apple should either open up the archive file format (and yes, this
includes the way the property list classes encode themselves) or create
a new NSCoder subclass that can encode to and decode from XML (and
still open up how the property list classes encode themselves).
Of course, if someone else were to release such a beast under a BSD- or
LGPL-style license, that would also be cool, and I'd probably use it.
But this is really something that needs to be part of Foundation.
-- Chris