= Boost.Iostreams Roadmap =

Possible avenues for future developments include:

 1. [wiki:IostreamsFiltersAndDevices Additional Filters and Devices]
 1. Wrappers for Boost components
    a. Boost.Asio
    a. Boost.Interprocess
 1. Wrappers for 3rd-party I/O components
    a. OpenSSL
    a. Crypto++
 1. Filter and Device concepts permitting additional optimizations:
    a. sharing of buffers between chain elements, à la [http://www.apachetutor.org/dev/brigades APR bucket brigades]
    a. scatter/gather operations
 1. String algorithms based on filter pipelines
 1. New abstractions improving the standard library iostreams:
    a. Provide more metadata about a stream/stream buffer, e.g.,
       i. [http://boost.org/libs/iostreams/doc/guide/modes.html mode]
       ii. blocking/non-blocking
    a. more fine-grained stream state
    a. support for asynchronous and non-blocking I/O (see below)
    a. support for moving or copying 
 1. Support for asynchronous and non-blocking I/O
    a. asio compatibility
    a. asynchronous and non-blocking device concepts
    a. abstractions for performing I/O using large collections of asynchronous/non-blocking chains [hopefully this can be implemented using asio]
 1. Better documentation
    a. Example of writing a symmetric filter
    a. Code templates for writing each type of Filter or Device, showing which member functions are required (if the user chooses to use member functions)
    a. Documentation of the interface for customizing the free iostreams functions read, write, etc.
    a. FAQ