[kepler-dev] ObjectToRecord related questions

[Hogan, D. (GE Energy)]

I have an actor that uses the structure of a file generated at runtime
to create an output record.  The actor is working, but I have a few
questions on ObjectToRecord since it is similar.

In ObjectToRecord, it does not change the type and lists it as fixme.
The documentation for RecordType mentions using setTypeAtMost(new
RecordType(new String[0], new Type[0])) when you want to specify a
record without specifying the fields.  Should I use that?  Is there a
better way to specify it is a record and the field names/types are
discovered at runtime?  Since unknown matches that type constraint, what
is the best way to handle this?

ObjectToRecord doesn't try to convert between standard Java types and
Ptolemy types.  I noticed there is a
ptolemy.data.expr.ConversionUtilities, but it looks limited to the
expression language needs.  Is there another conversion in Kepler?