Re: [Corelinux-public] Endianess

[Frank V. C. <fr...@co...>]

Jim Koontz wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Thomas Maguire wrote:
> 
> > I think an approach that encodes the ordering in the beginning of data files
> > and source files is an appropriate approach.  This would be akin to the
> > UNICODE non spacing non breaking code <0xfffe> used in the beginning of
> > unicode files to tell the reader the ordering.
> >
> 
> I think that is a satisfactory solution, should this be incorporated into
> the standards documents, or requirements?

There are a few requirements here:

1. Big/little endianess issues in the library development. I believe the
CoreLinux C++ standard addresses this.
2. CoreLinux++ should provide a persistence abstraction. A clear and
deisreable framework requirement.
3. The CoreLinux++ framework persistence implementation insures portable
content. For this I would ask the following:

Is our persistent data (the users application data I will assume) for
local storing? Exchange? Both?

The reason I ask this is because I assume that the framework will
consist of at least a suitable persistence abstraction and at minimum
one (1) implementation. 

If the implementation is a flat file one, then we can make IT'S
requirement and feature one that insures proper handling regardless of
the byte ordering in the content.

For a persistence implementation that uses XML (for example) this may be
a moot point.

For a persistence implementation that uses an underlying RDMS, I don't
know if it is moot or not.

While I agree with Thomas Maguire and you that it is a solution to a
data file exchange between big and little endian machines, I think it is
premature for us to make it a requirement of a implementation we don't
have a reqiurement for yet. 

When we get there, and if local file storage is the persistence
implementation, than we have this specification available which solves
the eventual issue.

Thoughts?