Re: RFP: CompoundStorage document

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

> XML is quite useful in many ways but it has limitations.

> 2) Encryption is extremely ugly.

Am i missing something obvious?
What does encryption have to do with the document being in XML format.

I dont know how this works out in practice but at least in theory I
thought that you compress the document then encryption is the absolute
last step done.  Encryption as a complete seperate task.

It would not be done not as an integral part of the document, that
cryptography would be left to the experts and you would just encrypt the
file irrespective of its contents or type.  In the case of compression
it does not make sense to have to decompress the whole document every time
(tar.gz) and there are clear benifits to be able to easily access
different parts or the document, or have some parts uncompressed (zip) and
use existing tools (zcat).  But I really think that the encryption should
be an almost completely seperate task.

Am i lost in computer science?  Are there practical reasons for not doing
it this way.  I would be interested to know.

Sincerely
Alan Horkan