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On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Paul Schlie wrote: >Agreed. > >But feel compelled to observe that once an object's internal representation >is formatted/encoded to/from whatever external representations form is >desired/required, it is then essentially in binary form; therefore binary >I/O actually represents the root common port format for of all I/O; where >more abstract ports may be thought of as merely munging on the data prior to >sending (or after receiving) it trough a binary port; which although it may >seem like a subtlety, if scheme were to view ports in this hierarchical way, >it could form the basis of a very flexible data transformation and I/O >architecture. Central idea: Right. If the binary port is primitive, then the various kinds of character ports can be provided as libraries. I take issue with several of your "therefores" though; while I agree with your conclusions, I don't think that the internal representation of any kind of data is, or should be presumed to be, at all similar to that which passes through a binary port. Bear