...

(Unlikely) Making the element of the "stream" be a new CAS - replacement for CAS Multipliers. Seems like the wrong granularity...  Maybe best to let Java evolve this for a few more releases.

Other changes

Judicious substitution of other packages for hand-built code

There's a plus and a minus for this - plus: we get better tested, better function (perhaps), better performance for some typical capabilities (e.g., parsing XML to/from Java Objects).  Minus - it make the code depend on these other packages. 

Some areas to consider:

• XML parsing and writing for descriptors - use JAXB or Jackson (already used for JSON support)