On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 11:52:58PM -0500, James K. Lowden wrote: > On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:56:09 +0100 > Manuel Bouyer <bou...@antioche.eu.org> wrote: > > > The actual quotactl interface has a version number embeeded, for this > > reason. But, for example, some fields can be added to the strucure > > without changing the version number. The consumer will just notice if > > the new field is present or not and real with it; this provides > > backward and forward compat (older consumers will just ignore the new > > fields). This is somethig you can't do with a binary format. > > You don't really want to hang your hat on that argument, do you? Or > are you using some form of text not represented by zeros and ones? > Surely you can imagine a binary protocol in which some parts are > optional and that can be extended in ways that older clients can > ignore. I know you can, because text *is* binary. > > Since the difference between "text" and "binary" is cultural > convention, neither one is inherently more or less capable as far as > the computer is concerned.
In this context, "text format" means a key/value pair format, in which some keys are optionnal and values can be of arbitrary types. Maybe you can do this with a binary format too, but it doesn't exists yet. -- Manuel Bouyer <bou...@antioche.eu.org> NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference --