Re: What does serialization mean?

Dear All,

If our only users were computing professionals their assumptions might
match those of the author of the Wikipedia definition. Meanwhile, users who
understand that "serialization" is rooted in "serial", which is related to
"series", might expect a sequence (series) of identifiable individual
items, such as characters. For what it's worth, when I want to be
understood and I'm dealing with people who may not be computing
professionals, I often say "produce the angle-bracketed XML", which (let me
say before anyone else does) might be too cumbersome for use in a spec. Can
we find wording that is midway between the Wikipedia approach, which is a
sort of professional jargon that may be misunderstood by outsiders who
would prefer not to be outsiders, and the cumbersome wording that I use
when teaching student beginners? I agree with Steven that the spec is fine
in the sense of not being wrong, but is it as clear as it could be for as
many potential readers as possible? I mean that as a question, and not as
advocacy, so I'm willing to learn that it is already maximally clear and
cannot be improved.

Best,

David

On Tue, Mar 4, 2025 at 9:03 AM Steven Pemberton <steven.pemberton@cwi.nl>
wrote:

> According to Wikipedia,
>
> "In computing, *serialization* is the process of translating a data
> structure <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure> or object
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_(computer_science)> state into a
> format that can be stored or transmitted."
>
> This is the intention of the text I wrote in the spec, and therefore would
> claim that the spec as it stands is fine.
>
> Steven
>
> On Wednesday 19 February 2025 14:49:38 (+01:00), Norm Tovey-Walsh wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > On the iXML CG call this week, we had a short discussion about
> serialization[1]. Several different perspectives were expressed regarding
> what “serialization” means.
> >
> > I found that a little surprising because I would have asserted that it
> unambiguously meant “constructing a sequence of Unicode characters” that
> represent an XML document.
> >
> > This is (literally) a serialization: <S>a</S>
> >
> > If you parse ‘a’ with this grammar:
> >
> > S: 'a' .
> >
> > and construct a representation of an S containing a literal “a”, I
> wouldn’t call the process of constructing that representation
> “serializaton”.
> >
> > On closer reading of the specification, it seems pretty clear that the
> word “serialization” is often (but not always!) a short hand for “making
> some XML.” I think that’s misleading. (I’m not saying you *can’t* call it
> that, technical specifications can define their terms any way they like,
> except, we don’t actually define “serialization” so we don’t do that
> either!)
> >
> > I’ve taken a stab at teasing apart those two perspectives, it’s in PR
> 296 and the changes are highlighted here:
> >
> > https://invisiblexml.org/pr/296/autodiff.html
> >
> > Alas, the navigation buttons seem to be broken. I’ll see about fixing
> that shortly. In the meantime, I think the changes are all highlighted.
> >
> > Hopefully this is a good starting point.
> >
> > Be seeing you,
> > norm
> >
> > [1] https://www.w3.org/2025/02/18-ixml-minutes#f6f8
> >
> > --
> > Norm Tovey-Walsh
> > Saxonica
> >
> >
>
>