Re: AW: AW: [PEAR-DEV] [RfC] XML_Serializer

Hi Stephan, Stephan Schmidt wrote:

Hi Greg,

Without documentation of how and why this is any better than wddx_serialize_*(), I am -1.

This is NOT better than WDDX, this is something totally different. This class is not about data interchange, it's about creating XML files from PHP data structures.

Your description above "creating XML files from PHP data structures" implies that Josh's suggestion on a name is better than XML_Serializer. If you use "serialize" in the name, all users will associate it with the serialization that they know, which is serialize and wddx_serialize_*. If you don't want this association, which you clearly don't by the capital "NOT" :), then the name makes no sense. You should call it XML_Data_Generator as Josh suggested, or XML_Data_Manager, since you are planning to add an unserialize. If you have the subclasses that you mention, people will understand what they do in the context of managing data. To imply that XML is not about data interchange doesn't make sense, that is its sole purpose. I am still -1 without documentation, but will +1 when I see the solution I describe below. Don't misunderstand, I have no interest in making your life hard, my interest is making the lives of those who would use your package easier. If a user can't tell from the name of a package what it does (and in this case, there is no clear way to express it), then there MUST be good, clear documentation accompanying it, otherwise it becomes yet another useful package that nobody uses because they don't know why it is any better or any different from similar solutions. If you can write in-code phpdoc comments, or even a text file that contains very prominently: -the problem that this package solves (the reason this is a problem should be illustrated with at least 1 example) -the way this package solves that problem -the differences from other similar solutions (explicitly mention wddx_serialize and serialize) The other details of implementation can wait, as these can be auto-generated using phpDocumentor. Your 1-line summary of the package should hint at this problem too. If half of the developers on pear.dev don't understand the purpose of your package on the initial proposal, that should tell you something about the clarity of the purpose, not about the intelligence of the pear.dev developers. We can't all be idiots, even if I sometimes am ;). Greg