Quoting Tony Linde <ael-at-star.le.ac.uk>:
> > I have yet to see a standard for bulk binary data transport
> > that is significantly better than FITS. Hence the wrapping
>
> There's a BinX format floating about from (I think) the grid world - and Guy
> told me about some DFDL (pronounced 'daffodil' apparently) which is a way of
> allowing xml-based tools to read binary format data. I don't know much more
> about it.
They're not ready yet; BinX is mostly a way of taking existing binary structures and presenting them as XML. So we can feed FITS files through BinX and apply it to XML parsers etc, treating the FITS file like XML. This is then reversible.
However they are both really designed around representing existing binary formats, usually table-based, in an XMLy way rather than the other way around.
Hopefully later Martin W says there will be better ways of taking XML models and storing them in binary, but not yet, ya boo sux.
-- Software Engineer Astrogrid, ROE (www.astrogrid.org) Mob: +44 7901 55 24 66 Fax: +44 131 668 82 64Received on 2004-04-14Z16:09:37