> But in order to write an app that just passes on fields in a > different protocol, possibly with different data representations, > it *has* to know the type of the field. You're suggesting that > even trivial protocol conversion apps must know all about the > freenet protocol. That's insane! If you give type hints in the > fields, the app can pass fields on according to certain rules, and > can be far far simpler.
No, that's simply not true. I really can't understand what you're think of--please give me some concrete examples, naming protocols you're thinking of specifically--I know them all and have written lots of software to them. To move a Freenet message around to or from some other protocol, all that necessary is to find a way to represent in that protocol the content model of a Freenet message. The simpler the content model, the simpler the mapping to the new protocol. The only time you need to know any details of specific fields is when you want to _act_ on them, not merely pass them along. And for that, yes, you need to know the details of whichever protocol you are intending to act on. You seem to think that you can map not merely the contents of a message from one protocol to a another, but something of its meaning as well, wihtout knowing the protocol and with only a few hints about data types. That's not possible, and never will be regardless of the protocol or the serialization method. The only thing that _can_ be preserved with 100% fidelity is the data model, and the simpler that is, the simpler it is to preserve across protocols. If the data model has no need for typing beyond the naming that's already there, adding it makes preserving the data model in other ways harder, not easier. This has all been done hundreds of times before for many years by lots of people. It's really simple, and you're trying to make it more complicated than it needs to be. -- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC _______________________________________________ Freenet-dev mailing list Freenet-dev at lists.sourceforge.net http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/freenet-dev
