Thanks Bob and Alan.  That was indeed very helpful.

I realized that the different load/save systems were addressing different
problems, but I didn't know what.  Now I understand that much better.

Eventually, I'll probably switch entirely to SmartRefStreams entirely,
based on all of the advantages you discuss (combining behavior and data,
intelligent handling of cycles and versioning, ability to deal with
arbitrary objects).  In fact, for much of what I want to do, the excellent
network-aware project mechanism is probably what I'll use in the long
term (or ImageSegments if I ever figure them out... :) ).

That being said, I am pleased that there are some somewhat human-readable
formats that may make debugging easier.

Thanks also for pointing me in the right direction.  I was looking for
paired functions.  Object>>storeOn: and Object class>>readFrom: paired
well in my mind.  Object>>saveOnFile and
ReadWriteStream>>fileInObjectAndCode weren't an obvious match for a
newbie.  But now that I see the example of reading and writing
SmartRefStreams directly (with next and nextPut:) it makes a lot more
sense to me.

-Eric