Re: Meaning of Document Closure

What do you mean by unfinished document? (I think I'm getting the gist, and
with the C example you seem to be referring to the language completeness v.
expressitivity issue...)

Is an unfinished document a document that does not have va syntax required
by the specified grammar of its schema definition?

At 08:53 99/09/14 -0700, John Boyer wrote:
 >The common language usage of the term closure is
 >as a noun for the act of closing or finishing (e.g. "We would like closure
 >on this specification process as soon as possible").
 >
 >The current XFDL filters are designed to specify the precise conditions
 >necessary to close or finish a document.  Thus, if person A signs an
 >unfinished document, then the signature filters can be set up to describe
 >precisely what is allowed to change after Person A's signature in order to
 >achieve closure on the document. 
 ...
 >Since application
 >designers are able to define part of the language that is being signed (the
 >keywords used by their brand of XML), our task is simply to provide
 >mechanisms that allow secure signatures to be created regardless of the
 >particular well-formed XML grammatical constructs that are selected by the
 >application designer.  Otherwise, we are deciding to sign a subset of
 >well-formed XML and must go to the trouble of defining that subset and then
 >considering whether the subset is sufficiently powerful
 >to express the types of signatures that the community at large will need to
 >create.

_________________________________________________________
Joseph Reagle Jr.   
Policy Analyst           mailto:reagle@w3.org
XML-Signature Co-Chair   http://w3.org/People/Reagle/