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