On Aug 13, 2013, at 4:14 AM, Tony Finch <dot@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Carsten Bormann <cabo@xxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> The Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) is a data format >> whose design goals include the possibility of extremely small code >> size, fairly small message size, and extensibility without the need >> for version negotiation. These design goals make it different from >> earlier binary serializations such as ASN.1 and MessagePack, or other >> binary serializations that may be created in the future. > > I have a small problem with this abstract: the three goals that it picks > out are satisfied by MessagePack better than CBOR, since MessagePack is > simpler so will need even less code. MsgPack is not extensible. If it was, we might have been able to avoid all of this. > As far as I can tell what makes CBOR > different from MessagePack is support for richer types, especially > strings. Streaming support is useful but it wasn't one of the original > goals. It *was* part of the original goals; it wasn't part of the original format. Some people on the AppsAWG list pointed out to us that our format was not meeting its goals by not supporting streaming, so we added it. Yes, this added a bit of complexity for decoders, but we handled that as best we could. --Paul Hoffman