Design pattern for multiple output formats

Question

I have a class structure which represents (internally) the data I wish to output to a file.

Some of the member variables are private to the data class so that it ca

Answer 1

I think the problem you have here is one of design. Serializing to a file shouldn't be modifying that data in anyway, so why should those functions be private? If all you are doing is examining data and writing it out, you should have an adequate public interface.