Re: Property List Format vs NSKeyedArchiver Format
Re: Property List Format vs NSKeyedArchiver Format
- Subject: Re: Property List Format vs NSKeyedArchiver Format
- From: Graham Cox <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:43:15 +1100
On 14/10/2009, at 8:40 AM, Jens Alfke wrote:
I would like to read more on the NSKeyedArchiver XML format, but
can't find
documentation on it. Is it open?
No. It's undocumented and could change in the future;
While strictly true, it's not possible that Apple could really ever
stop supporting it, due to the many millions of files out there that
use it and will have to remain readable in their existing form. It may
be that it gets superseded or converted to something else when read
in, but surely never become impossible to read. One of the huge
advantages of keyed archives is that they are highly extensible
without breaking backward compatibility (if you're careful) so I think
using keyed archives is a pretty safe bet for format longevity.
The difficulty is that the exact structure is not publicly documented,
though it is readily reverse engineered. As long as that engineering
was done diligently and carefully, I believe you could support the
format on other platforms well enough and remain compatible with
Cocoa. Whether the effort of doing this is worth it compared to just
rolling a cross-platform format of your own is something only you can
determine.
--Graham
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