Re: serialization format

Sorry just a sidenote;
err...
encode into utf8 codepoints maybe?  which would expand 0x80-0xFF by 1
character each... and you could violate utf rules and encode a F880
that's a 0 codepoint...

(take a value, that's a codepoint, make a utf8 version of that
value... which for 0x0 to 0x7F is that character... but it provides a
way to escape \0 if that's a concern and why are you encoding it at
all?)