Boost.Iostreams Roadmap

Possible avenues for future developments include:

1. Additional Filters and Devices
2. Filter and Device concepts permitting additional optimizations:
   1. sharing of buffers between chain elements, à la ​APR bucket brigades
   2. scatter/gather operations
3. String algorithms based on filter pipelines
4. New abstractions improving the standard library iostreams:
   1. Provide more metadata about a stream/stream buffer, e.g.,
      1. ​mode
      2. blocking/non-blocking
   2. more fine-grained stream state
   3. support for asynchronous and non-blocking I/O (see below)
   4. copyable or movable
5. Support for asynchronous and non-blocking I/O
   1. asio compatibility
   2. asynchronous and non-blocking device concepts
   3. abstractions for performing I/O using large collections of asynchronous/non-blocking chains [hopefully this can be implemented using asio]
6. Better documentation
   1. Example of writing a symmetric filter
   2. Code templates for writing each type of Filter or Device, showing which member functions are required (if the user chooses to use member functions)
   3. Documentation of the interface for customizing the free iostreams functions read, write, etc.
   4. FAQ