Range interface for std.serialization

[Dicebot]

On Thursday, 22 August 2013 at 15:33:07 UTC, Johannes Pfau wrote:
> The reason is simple: In serialization it is not common to 
> post-process
> the serialized data as far as I know. Usually it's either 
> written to a
> file or sent over network which are perfect examples of Streams 
> (or
> output ranges).

Hm but in this model it is file / socket which is an OutputRange, 
isn't it? Serializer itself just provides yet another InputRange 
which can be fed to target OutputRange. Am I getting this part 
wrong?

> But InputRanges are limited to the same type for all elements, 
> the
> "serialize" call isn't.

I was thinking about this but do we have any way to express 
non-monotone range in D? Variant seems only option, it implies 
that any format used by Archiver must always store type 
information though.

> Of course you can use Variant. But what about
> big structs?

After some thinking I come to conclusion that is simply a matter 
of two `data` ranges - one parametrized by output type and other 
"raw". Latter than can output stuff in string chunks of undefined 
size (as small as serialization implementation allows). Does that 
help?