> This is a good point. One feature for my lib suggested by someone (I believe
> it was someone who worked on pickle - the Python xml serializer) was to have
> Ruby auto-gen the class based on the read in xml structure, a very cool
> idea. This solution would streamline things a bit more. I'm assuming there'd
> be no hang-ups with implementation.

That's definitely the right way and that would be the data binding I 
have always looked for. All the Java data binding tools currently 
available (Sun, Castor, Relaxer, etc.) do nearly exactly what was 
described above, but they all do need an additional compile step. I.e., 
you put a DTD or an XML schema into a compiler, that generates Java 
classes for XML de-/serializing. That's definitely an extreme overkill, 
because you would have to write a DTD or Schema for your configuration 
file and you definitely do not want to do that, do you?

The dynamic nature of Ruby makes it possible to do all this without an 
extra compiler and _even_ without a DTD or a Schema: Just generate code 
on the fly from a document instance ... coooool ...

Cheers,

   <maik/>