RE: referencing c14n in xmldsig

At 10:54 AM 5/30/00 -0700, Brian LaMacchia wrote:
 >OK, I'll use the TR/2000 one.  Also, is it likely that
 >"www.w3.org/2000/02/xmldsig" will stay the same, or will that change to
 >whatever year & month the final Recommendation/proposed std. is?
 
Short answer, yes it will change; not sure when is optimum though.

It's supposed to change, when the semantics/syntax of namespace
substantively change. [b]  Neither our syntax or semantics have
substantively changed, instead it's been additions and clarifications.
However, I think the build up of change, particularly as we enter the
standards track merits a new namespace. But since we're pushing so hard to
make that happen ASAP, I don't want to do it quite yet since our examples
(from Kent and Petteri) wouldn't be quite right then. However, I planned on
asking them and the WG if people area conformtable with:
        http://www.w3.org/2000/06/xmldsig#

In general, changing namespaces can be work for editors and implementors as
a spec progresses, but if you aren't careful about this, you can end up
messing up the very people using your specification.

I recently commented about this to the Schema WG itself. Unfortunately,
they've been using the same namespace through big changes in their syntax
which means that our signature examples that, on a certain date, validated
against X will stop working when the schema WG publishes a new draft with
big changes under the same namespace and retroactively change what that
namespace means (and how a validator works!).

  I appreciate you don't want to change the namespace every time
  you issue a new draft and I hope you would try every time you made a
  substantive change, because now the result is that even if I write my XML
  instance that (today) validates under [1,2] next time you put out a new
  draft it won't! Before, not updating your namespace violated a philosphical
  point (but the actual dtd and schema were in a more specific (month) date
  space). Now you are violating a more practical point, if I have an example
  that works now based on something in date space it won't in the future.
  [a] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xmlschema-dev/2000Apr/0022.html

[b] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xmlschema-dev/2000Apr/0026.html

_________________________________________________________
Joseph Reagle Jr.   
W3C Policy Analyst                mailto:reagle@w3.org
IETF/W3C XML-Signature Co-Chair   http://www.w3.org/People/Reagle/

Received on Tuesday, 30 May 2000 14:49:30 UTC