XML Canonicalization Requirements

Folks,

I want to draw your attention to the W3C Note [1].
        http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-xml-canonical-req

That WG is looking for direction on the level of semantic depth folks like
you will want in your signatures. A couple of related questions bouncing
around from that WG (based on an email from Bert Bos):

  - the XML-namespace draft allows changes in prefixes that namespace-aware 
    applications are supposed to ignore. I think DOM-HASH and other
processors 
    will have to expand the namespace of every single ns-identifier so as to
ensure they 
    have a non-ambiguis hash, no?

  - if a document has a DTD and in the DTD there are fixed or default
    attributes that don't occur in the instance, do we consider those
    attributes to be part of the instance or not?

  - if a document has a DTD that defines "unparsed entities" (links to 
    images and such; yeah, I know people should use Xlink for that,
    but XML still allows it) then the internal name of the entity is
    arbitrary. Should it be renamed in the canonical form?

  - to what degree should the semantic or surface structure of referenced
    resources be included in the hash? Where would you come down in
addressing 
    the old problem (even from PICS days) of what is the semantic scope of a
resource 
    that links or is composed of other resources?


_______________________     
Regards,          http://web.mit.edu/reagle/www/
Joseph Reagle     E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65  BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E
independent research account

Received on Tuesday, 30 March 1999 19:02:49 UTC