"Protocol Buffers" for Tango & Phobos ??

[Nick B]

Hi

I came across this the other day, and no one has mentioned this, on this 
news group before, I thought I would bring the subject to the 
communities attention, so to speak.

Google has very recently, open sourced "Protocol Buffers".

What is it you ask ?  In a couple of lines it is a language-neutral, 
platform-neutral, extensible way of serializing structured data for use 
in communications protocols, data storage, and more.

Think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler.

Why not just use XML ?

Protocol buffers have many advantages over XML for serializing 
structured data.  Protocol buffers:
* are simpler
* are 3 to 10 times smaller
* are 20 to 100 times faster
* are less ambiguous
* generate data access classes that are easier to use programmatically.

PB supports Java, Python,and C++ currently.

A more detailed overview can be found here:
http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/overview.html

and the FAQ here:
http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/faq.html

See the answer to the question "Can I add support for a new language to 
protocol buffers?" inside the FAQ.

Some Tips and comments can be found here:
http://zunger.livejournal.com/164024.html


My questions.
Does the D community see this of interest ?
Is this something they might use ?
Do they see value in it being added to the respective
Tango or Phobos frameworks ?

any other comments ?

cheers

Nick B.