> Have you considered BEEP? It's an IETF standard for designing application
> protocols. There is good software in several languages. There's even an
> O'Reilly book covering it. There are rumours of a ruby implementation but
> I've not found it yet.

I've had this listed on rubyxml.com for a while:
  http://www.rubyxml.com/raa/details#Ruby%20BEEP%20Core

and

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/beepcore-ruby/

James

> 
> There are parts of the O'Reilly book that would be worth a read 
> regardless,
> especially the discussions around designing and implementing application
> protocols.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bob
>