[MINUTES] VCWG Barcodes and Data Integrity 2026-04-28

This meeting of the VCWG Barcodes and Data Integrity task force focused on
administrative and process items, followed by a review of pull requests and
issues related to the VC barcodes specification. Discussions included
resolving GitHub UI and whitespace issues, improving specification examples
with clearer explanations and ordering, and merging administrative pull
requests related to publishing workflows. The group also explored the
integration of GitHub Code Spaces for spec editing and addressed a PR
concerning multibase encoding for PDF 417 VCBs. Finally, the team processed
several issues, including those related to outdated test vectors, incorrect
checksums in MRZ examples, and the use of outdated vocabulary.

*Topics Covered:*

   - *VC Barcodes Spec and Data Integrity Workflow:* The meeting began by
   outlining the agenda, which included administrative tasks and a significant
   portion dedicated to reviewing pull requests and issues for both the VC
   barcodes spec and data integrity work.
   - *GitHub UI and Whitespace Issues:* The team encountered and discussed
   issues with GitHub UI, specifically regarding how commits with whitespace
   changes were being displayed and their impact on the git history, with
   suggestions to address these offline.
   - *Improving Specification Examples:* A discussion was held regarding
   the need to reword and reorder examples in the specification to improve
   clarity, particularly by starting with simpler cases and distinguishing
   between standardized and application-specific properties.
   - *Merging Administrative Pull Requests:* Several administrative pull
   requests were reviewed for merging, including one that introduced a
   publishing workflow script, and the team worked through a temporary issue
   with merging PRs due to a failing preview job.
   - *GitHub Code Spaces for Spec Editing:* A pull request to enable GitHub
   Code Spaces for spec editing was discussed, focusing on its benefits for
   accessibility and ease of contribution, while also addressing concerns
   about the security and maintenance of the extension used. The PR was left
   open for further deliberation on alternatives.
   - *PDF 417 VCBs and Multibase Encoding:* A small pull request was
   reviewed and will be merged, recommending the use of Base64 URL or
   multibase encoding for PDF 417 VCBs, acknowledging that multibase offers
   limited benefit due to the need for prior knowledge to locate VCBs within
   the barcode.
   - *Data Integrity Work:* While the lead for this section was absent, it
   was noted that the final report for the quantum safe specification had been
   merged, and there was a discussion about the repository transfer process to
   the task force once other administrative steps are completed.
   - *Barcode Issue Processing:* Several issues from 2024 were reviewed,
   including one concerning incorrect checksum digits in MRZ examples, which
   is to be fixed by updating the examples to reflect current specifications.
   Another issue about outdated "tur bitstring conversion" was discussed, with
   the conclusion that a sentence should be added to the specification stating
   that certain properties are not supported by TUR bitstring lists. Finally,
   an issue regarding the possibility of putting bare VCs in QR codes was
   closed as it has been addressed by recent updates to the specification.

*Action Items:*

   - Wesley Smith to investigate and address the whitespace issues
   encountered with GitHub UI for the VC barcodes spec PRs.
   - Wesley Smith to ensure that the PR updating test vectors includes
   updates to generated barcode images.
   - The team will monitor and potentially address the security and
   maintenance concerns of the GitHub Code Spaces extension used in the
   relevant PR.
   - Wesley Smith to add a comment to the issue regarding incorrect
   checksum digits in MRZ examples, proposing a fix to update the examples and
   marking it as a "good first issue" with priority two.
   - Wesley Smith to add a sentence to the specification stating that
   certain properties are not supported by TUR bitstring lists and close the
   corresponding issue, tagging it as a "good first issue."

HTML:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-vcwg-barcodes-and-data-integrity-2026-04-28.html

Video:
https://meet.w3c-ccg.org/archives/w3c-vcwg-barcodes-and-data-integrity-2026-04-28.mp4

[image: W3C] <https://www.w3.org/>
VCWG Barcodes and Data Integrity 28 April 2026 Attendees

Present

Benjamin Young, Dave Lehn, Dave Longley, Elaine Wooton, Ivan Herman, Kevin
Dean, Parth Bhatt, Wesley Smith

Regrets

-

Chair

-

Scribe

transcriber
Contents

   1. VC Barcodes Spec and Data Integrity Workflow <#ef2b>
   2. GitHub UI and Whitespace Issues <#22c8>
   3. Improving Specification Examples <#dd54>
   4. Merging Administrative Pull Requests <#8860>
   5. GitHub Code Spaces for Spec Editing <#90bf>
   6. PDF 417 VCBs and Multibase Encoding <#53c6>

Meeting minutes

Ivan Herman: Good afternoon.

Wesley Smith: Good morning slash afternoon folks.

Elaine Wooton: Wanted to say good morning with my real face, but now I'll
turn off the camera.

Wesley Smith: Morning folks. I'll give it a couple more minutes for people
to trickle in before we get started.

Wesley Smith: I know we're hoping Greg Bernstein will be here to lead the
DI portion of the call. Do we know of anybody else that we're expecting? I
know we had quite a lot more cases the first week or two, but …

Dave Longley: Yeah, I'm not sure.

Dave Longley: This is maybe the first week since the first invite went out
and maybe people have not appropriately updated calendars and that sort of
thing.

Wesley Smith: All right.

Wesley Smith: I'll get started at 5 in just a sec here.
VC Barcodes Spec and Data Integrity Workflow

Wesley Smith: All right, let's go ahead and get started. hey everybody.
Thanks for being here. This is the April 28th meeting of the barcodes and
data integrity task force of the VC working group. the agenda for today is
much the same as it has been the last couple weeks and probably will be for
the foreseeable future. we'll go through administrative and process items
briefly and then we'll spend about half the call doing PR review and issue
processing on the VC barcodes spec and about half the time doing PR review
and issue processing on the various
GitHub UI and Whitespace Issues

Wesley Smith: inflight data integrity works. So with that in mind, I guess
we'll do announcements and introductions. I don't have any announcements
for the group. Does anybody want to introduce themselves or have any
announcements to hearing nothing I think we can go ahead and jump right
into some VC barcodes work then let me go ahead and share my screen. So
there are now actually a few pull requests open on the barcode spec. A
couple of them we've already discussed here.

Wesley Smith: A couple of them are kind of small process style pull
requests and then some of them do make more substantive changes to the
specification itself. So the first thing I want to discuss with the group
and that's largely because I have a question is there's something weird
happening with GitHub and the GitHub UI and it's breaking something. So,
this has been a PR that there's been a fair amount of discussion on, but
last night when I committed a change suggestion directly from the GitHub
UI,…

Ivan Herman: Go ahead.

Wesley Smith: it did this thing where it basically rewrites the entire file.

Wesley Smith: I know Benjamin Young and I had run into something similar on
a different specification and I think he said it was something to do with
new line character encodings or something to that effect. but I'm curious
what the group's perspective is here on this. So I can show you the actual
commit that did it. It's a tiny little commit. Yeah, I guess it won't show
you the detail. Basically, this commit updated one line of text. but it
caused the entire index file to be sort of rewritten. So, I'm curious what
people think about this. I just realized that I don't get hand
notifications if I'm not tabbed in. So, feel free to jump in. Dave Lane, go
ahead.

Dave Lehn: go to the little gear thing and…

Dave Lehn: do the ignore whites space thing and see if that fixes it. next
to the submit review.

Wesley Smith: this gear thing.

Dave Lehn: So yeah,…

Wesley Smith: Right.

Dave Lehn: it was a white space thing.

Wesley Smith: So that shows what the commit is, but does that actually
solve the problem in the git history?

Dave Lehn: No, no, it's just ignoring it for the diff. So the…

Dave Lehn: if you were to check it out and look at it, you can probably see
that it probably changed all the line endings from whatever it was to
whatever it is now.

Wesley Smith: …

Wesley Smith: what do people suggest as the way to move forward here?

Wesley Smith: Should I re redo this PR in a separate branch or something to
that effect? right.

Dave Lehn: You probably don't want to commit something like that
intentionally,…

Dave Lehn: but I mean, you might want to check and see what it was. did it
get reformatted to all the wrong thing before and…

Dave Lehn: it's just fixing it, or did it

Wesley Smith: That was my other question.

Wesley Smith: Is this flipping a switch back on that was previously flipped
off in a similar way? I don't actually know. okay, that's fine. I will
maybe take some of this discussion offline, figure out what to do with this
PR. regardless of that kind of technical bump, I think this PR is about
ready to be …

Dave Lehn: just a note that setting that you changed may be stuck on so you
may want to turn it off so you will see the differences later.

Wesley Smith: sorry. Go ahead. heard that.

Dave Lehn: I think it's Yeah.

Wesley Smith: Anybody else have their hand up? I'm apparently do not get
notifications when I'm in a different tab. All right. So, regardless of
that technical hiccup, this PR is about ready to get merged. There's been a
fair amount of discussion on the topic. Ivonne, I know you had some
questions but recently approved the changes.

Wesley Smith: Manu made some points that I attempted to address. So I do
think that the content in this PR is about ready.

Wesley Smith: So if you're a interested participant in the details in the
conversation of this PR, go ahead and take one last look and then I'll try
to get it merged in some form at some point soon.
Improving Specification Examples

Ivan Herman: I looked at it about two hours ago and it looks okay to me.
Ivan Herman:

Wesley Smith: Okay. …

Ivan Herman: I raised a separate issue because I think that the examples
should be rewarded but I put that separate issue for good reasons.

Wesley Smith: yeah. Yeah.

Wesley Smith: So, I noted that and agreed. I think that probably doesn't
need to grow in scope to include example reworking.

Ivan Herman: Exactly.

Wesley Smith: While we're on the topic,…

Ivan Herman: That is a separate issue.

Wesley Smith: do you want to briefly give an overview of what you put in
this issue? What you think the examples could benefit from?

Ivan Herman: Usually is a lot of things are presumed as being known and
they are not obvious. So, I gave a lot of examples here, but yeah, it's on
the screen. I don't want to read up exactly what I mean. One thing is maybe
that comes through is it was I think Dave Longley who on the last call when
we discussed it made this point which for me was sort of clicked is that in
the case of augmenting the subject is different. The subject is essentially
the old barcode. that's is the case in the examples but this is something
that was worth really emphasizing and in the same direction inversing the
order.

Ivan Herman: The example three is the obvious one and in your list in the
introduction you start with the obvious case where you have a verifiable
credential from somewhere and you prove it like we do with all the others
and you would the in inverted comma the only thing you do is to convert it
into a barcode. and that should be the first example because that the
simple one and the other two are more complex.

Ivan Herman: And one other thing which permeates very many examples that
are written in different documents which always bothers me is that we put
in properties or classes that are application specific and not standardized
by us and we mix it with those properties and classes that we do
standardize and I know that in real JSON it's difficult to differentiate
between the two but in our examples we could use a different color or
something to make these distinctions very clear.

Ivan Herman: I know that this AMV whatever it's unclear where it will be
standardized and so that's still a question that we will have to discuss at
some point but I see a protected component index and…

Ivan Herman: I have not the faintest idea what the hell that is because
this is not something that we defined in any of on our spec so far and you
put it into an example and that sort of lead people away from the
discussion.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. …

Wesley Smith: Go ahead. Understood. And thanks. Much appreciated. it's
useful for you to go through these in such such depth. so to speak briefly
to what I understand the current state of the document to be and I think
what we want to happen with respect specifically to this ammo driver's
license type and the protected compone so I believe protected component
index is currently defined by the specification but I believe it is also
strongly coupled to this AMA driver's license type which is something that
we don't want.

Wesley Smith: So I think the last time we discussed it the general
consensus is maybe a strong word but the general lean from the group was we
are probably going to want to generalize protected component index as much
as we can to be an index against the barcode that is being augmented and
it's an index defined somehow in some generic way maybe just as an
extension point and…

Wesley Smith: then we're going to want to have the amber driver's license
type B part of an appendex. So that's my current understanding. Right.

Ivan Herman: Yeah, I think that's correct.

Ivan Herman: That's correct. Yes. But that's right.

Wesley Smith: So I want to be clear about the nuance there that I think
yeah right now these two are strongly coupled but I do think protected
component index is defined. we need to decouple them make this generic so
it can be used for expressions of XI cryptoeet signatures over barcode data
that are not specified directly in our specification. and then in an
appendix say here's how you use it for this type. All right.

Ivan Herman: That's fine.
Merging Administrative Pull Requests

Wesley Smith: Sounds like we are on the same page there. thanks for going
over your new issue as it relates to that previous PR. all right. Let's go
through a couple of these PRs and get them merged down. So, this one I
approved this a week ago. It's been sitting for a week. this is just adding
a script.

Wesley Smith: It's adding a workflow. I'm go ahead and merge this on the
call unless anybody has any objection. actually I am curious this is not an
editorial PR. What would you describe this as administrative?

Ivan Herman: It's an administrative PR…

Ivan Herman: if there is notable…

Wesley Smith: Thank you.

Ivan Herman: because it's the way we publish the document. ment
automatically. And of course you merge this one and then next time we merge
a real PR so to say with real changes then we will have to ch to check
whether it is really published to see if this works and I have this
experience with other documents that we have done it's good time time to
make this check I don't say that you have to do

Ivan Herman: that you merge but once a month at least or once every two
week if you do a PR then check it because I don't know which document there
was a miss there was a bug somewhere and for a half a year we didn't
realize that nothing was published on slashtr…

Ivan Herman: because all the failed and then It's more difficult to find a
problem.

Wesley Smith: Okay, that's a good note.

Wesley Smith: Anybody know why I can't merge this PR? Is it because this
preew thing failed? So, deploy PR preview is canceled after 1500 minutes.

Ivan Herman: What? I have no idea…

Wesley Smith: It's a day or something, right? okay.

Ivan Herman: what that stuff is.

Wesley Smith: I cannot merge it.

Ivan Herman: Let me try.

Wesley Smith: I do. We need two reviewers to approve it. Does it need
multiple approvals? Multiple reviews?

Ivan Herman: I have no idea. Don't let me go there. Just a minute.

Wesley Smith: And…

Wesley Smith: if we get down in the weeds, we can table this and maybe
figure it out offline,…

Wesley Smith: Ivon. But if possible, I'd like to get it handled on the call.

Ivan Herman: Can I try whether I can merge it…

Ivan Herman: because I have an admin, right? I think it merged it for me.

Wesley Smith: Sure, go for it. Okay. I'm a lesser being.

Wesley Smith: That's fine. I accept this reality. All right.

Ivan Herman: And…

Ivan Herman: let's not try to understand everything.

Wesley Smith: Better All another similar PR.

Wesley Smith: You might need to be standing by again, Ivon. I'm logged in.
Okay. …

Wesley Smith: the preview failed after a day. and maybe that's why. Okay.
I'll just type yeah, I

Ivan Herman: Can you check other PRs whether it does the same thing?

Wesley Smith: I don't think it does because I have merged.

Ivan Herman: def container for previewing code spaces. What is this?

Wesley Smith: We have the author on the call here. Give me just a second.

Ivan Herman: Because this has the same problem. it's not a matter of the
spec, it's a matter of the repo.

Benjamin Young: Yeah, that shouldn't change the spec at all.

Benjamin Young: So yeah,…

Benjamin Young: so the problem is which thing in this case?

Ivan Herman: I have no idea.

Ivan Herman: I have no idea what this is about.

Wesley Smith: problem is that I can't click the big green merge button.

Wesley Smith: Yes,…

Dave Lehn: You can look at the actions.

Benjamin Young: But you used to be able to.

Wesley Smith: I can click this one and…

Dave Lehn: You can look at the actions and see that they are failing.

Wesley Smith: this one doesn't have the failing. okay, so it does look the
only ones I haven't been able to click are the ones that have that timeout
error.

Wesley Smith: So, it's probably that to click on the actions to see which
ones are failing. Yeah.

Ivan Herman: There is a preview thing…

Benjamin Young: Yeah. It's also possible somebody set up branch protection
rules that are requiring things to pass.

Ivan Herman: which I don't know where it comes from. is it possible that
preview failed

Dave Longley: So, I wasn't watching the screen too closely.

Dave Longley: When you say you can't click the button, is that because it
looks like you can't click it, or can you click it and it just is that
color?

Wesley Smith: Wow.

Dave Longley: So you can click it.

Wesley Smith: Okay. Thanks. That's a little silly.
GitHub Code Spaces for Spec Editing

Wesley Smith: I can click it. More power than I know. My mistake. I will go
ahead and merge this All right. Benjamin, do you want to briefly discuss
the dev container P that you put up

Benjamin Young: You have more power than

Benjamin Young: Yeah, we've done this on at least one other specification.
It's essentially allows you to use GitHub code spaces to live in your
browser. And the bigger thing that it sets because you can do that already.
The bigger thing it sets up is a live server. as you can see there, so that
you can preview in your browser as well. And that just makes it possible
for folks who don't have VS Code installed or don't want to. and want to
just edit some HTML and see what they're editing. it makes that possible.
And there's instructions I think referenced if you go back to the
conversations tab with and click on Yeah,…

Benjamin Young: go ahead and click on that. this is where we did it first
was in this render methods repo and there are instructions there. yeah,…

Wesley Smith: I'm going to go ahead and…

Wesley Smith: just copy paste this into a comment on this PR.

Benjamin Young: that'd be fine. We could even put it in the readme, but
it's also on the w3ccc.org website, there's a contributing page that
explains all that. but the idea is that from GitHub you can click edit in
code spaces

Benjamin Young: what you're changing make multiple commits from there and
create a PR just like somebody who has bothered to set up all the stuff
locally and run command line stuff and whatever without having to do all
that. So that's it.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. …

Wesley Smith: this seems to me to be improving one specific workflow for
working on the spec at no cost. so, I'm happy to merge Any other opinions?

Wesley Smith: Any objections?

Dave Lehn: I tried raising my hand again, but I guess you can hear that.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, thank you for speaking up.

Dave Lehn: Yeah,…

Wesley Smith: I can't hear for some reason the meat hand raise noise and
other tabs.

Dave Lehn: that's fine. this is just that whatever extension that's there.
I seem to remember looking at this before and…

Dave Lehn: it looked like it was completely unmaintained. I don't know if
this is a security issue too, just using random people's code to do this
thing. Is that an issue or is this a well understood community thing that
people use or what?

Benjamin Young: There might be others out there. if you think we need to
shop for one, but it's running an HTTP server inside of a dev container
that's had a UU ID specific to the person who clicked the code spaces.

Benjamin Young: So unless the person is going to self harm through that
HTTP server, I really don't know that there's a risk.

Dave Lehn: I've never used any of this stuff,…

Dave Lehn: so I don't even know what's going on here,

Benjamin Young: So code spaces to maybe explain it a little more code
spaces is just a docker container with VS code in it by default.

Wesley Smith: This code tab. Yep.

Benjamin Young: So if Wes you go to the code tab in ub. the default one and
then where it says code in the green button and then code spaces tab right
below your mouse. if you were to click that now, you don't need to, but if
you create code space on main, then you get an environment that's
essentially VS Code in your browser and you're by default editing on main.

Benjamin Young: The instructions I wrote up talk about switching branches
and whatever, but the thing that GitHub weirdly lacks is the ability to
preview HTML in your browser. So, the live server thing just makes it
possible within that Docker container spin up an HTTP server that…

Benjamin Young: then lets you preview what's inside that Docker container.
why that's not table stakes for this thing, I don't know, but So, there's a
community extension there. There might be another one out there. yeah.

Dave Lehn: There's 2,300 open issues on this project.

Dave Lehn: …

Benjamin Young: It's still the one suggested throughout all the blogs and…

Dave Lehn: just beware.

Ivan Herman: I'm

Benjamin Young: therefore by AI as the thing to use for it. doesn't mean we
have to use it, at all. We don't even have to merge this unless somebody
wants it. But again it's just HTML in the person's browser out of a Docker
container that is the contents of this repo. So the risk here is somebody
running HTML in their browser which they're doing already. So I don't like
I said they'd have to really be copying and pasting stuff from some other
place to do more than they're doing.

Wesley Smith: and Ivonne.

Wesley Smith: Does W3C have a position on this sort of thing? Do you know

Ivan Herman: I don't think that we have ever heard a discussion about it
that…

Ivan Herman: but nevertheless, me as a person, I am a little bit uneasy
based on what Dave said. because who knows what happens and if it destroys
one or one of our documents or puts it back to I don't know where later is
it really worse the trouble I mean do we really have people on this group
who need this I am not convinced I don't

Ivan Herman: experimenting with these kind of tools on a repo that has a
lot of people working together and…

Ivan Herman: has documents which have some level of timing attached to. so
I'm a bit uneasy to be honest.

Wesley Smith: heard. And really quick,…

Wesley Smith: Benjamin, before you go, agreed with some of your points of
one point I want to make is you said, do we have people in this group that
need this glow? I don't think so.

Wesley Smith: I don't think that I think the right way to look at it is
accessibility improvements mean that we might get people into the group
that currently are kept out of the group by the barrier to entry that we
currently have from a very technical contribution process.

Ivan Herman: I agree with that.

Ivan Herman: Okay, I take that.

Dave Lehn> here's the extension source; GitHub -
ritwickdey/vscode-live-server: Launch a development local Server with live
reload feature for static & dynamic pages. · GitHub
<https://github.com/ritwickdey/vscode-live-server>

Wesley Smith: Benjamin, go ahead.

Benjamin Young: Yeah.

Benjamin Young: So the way forward without this is folks who need this kind
of environment still have it. they can still do code spaces. they just
won't be able to see the effect of working in the code space until after
they send in their PR at which point the W3C preview bot which is going to
do the same. is going to make a URL that has HTML that one can load in
one's browser. then they have to wait on all that to happen before they can
see what's happened in their PR and then they can switch to that branch and
continue to make changes. so it's the exact same experience. It's just
glacial.

Benjamin Young: And Dave, if you again want to find something that you feel
more comfortable about, please do

Wesley Smith: All So, it sounds like we should at the very least leave this
PR open for a bit longer while people look into alternatives, that sort of
thing. I don't get a tremendous amount of heartburn from this…

Wesley Smith: although I do think that good questions to answer things like
Ivon raised a concern about sorry okay yeah so Ivon made a point about
damaging the specification in some way.

Ivan Herman: No, sorry.

Ivan Herman: No, no, no. Sorry. But I have remark when we finish this.

Wesley Smith: I would be curious what the potential risks would be if a
super user with administrative level control over the repository went
through this flow.

Wesley Smith: Does that pose a security risk? I expect that largely the
things that you can do using this flow are limited by your GitHub account
level powers. so I don't think that's an issue for most people, but for the
corner cases, maybe that's something interesting to look into. That sort of
thing. Go ahead, Ivon.

Ivan Herman: No, Benjamin,…

Ivan Herman: go on because I have something different. I presume you want
to answer this, Benjamin.

Benjamin Young: Yeah,…

Benjamin Young: I mean we can dig into all of that. again it's an HTTP
server running inside the Docker container. So it would have to be
escalating to a point where it's somehow got your key to commit as you to
do anything else. All of which goes through the VS code UI forget and
requires additional login steps and…

Benjamin Young: and authentication steps just like VS Code does locally.
whatever. But if y'all are squeamish about it, don't worry about it.

Wesley Smith: So I'm in favor of at least leaving the PR open,…

Wesley Smith: give people some time to look into alternatives if they want.
Again, I personally don't have a lot of Harvard and I'd be happy to merge
this. but if people want to give it some more time to deliberate and look
into maybe better maintained alternatives that is fine. I will note that
the issue count that you mentioned Dave Lane could be interpreted multiple
ways. If these are issue counts if these are issues like this is a pressing
security vulnerability please fix this that's one thing but if these are
issues like this is a widely used and generally liked piece of software
that a lot of people want features in that sort of thing. those are very
different things.

Benjamin Young> It's already in use on Render Method, fwiw

Wesley Smith: I'm gonna go ahead and move on unless anybody has anything
else they want to say on the topic. Ivon, go ahead.

Ivan Herman: In the meantime I have checked and…

Benjamin Young> most of those issues on that repo are bogus…

Benjamin Young> f

Benjamin Young> for example learn HTML · Issue #3288 ·
ritwickdey/vscode-live-server · GitHub
<https://github.com/ritwickdey/vscode-live-server/issues/3288>

Ivan Herman: the latest version is on DR so the akidna stuff works.
PDF 417 VCBs and Multibase Encoding

Wesley Smith: That is wonderful to hear. let's see all right. We have a
very small PR that I raised half an hour ago and that is directly
addressing an issue and the entirety of the PR is a twoline change. It
basically says that for PDF 417 so for PDF 417 VCBs we recommend that and
specifically they use this type.

Wesley Smith: We recommend that you use B 64 URL when you encode these
things before you put them into the PDF 417. This PR adds a couple of lines
of text that say if you want you can also use multibase and then that's
essentially it. so I think the value of that is somewhat self-explanatory.
we want to be clear that you can use multibase if you want. the reason why
multibase isn't essential slash super valuable here is because you need
some ahead of time knowledge to understand where in the PDF 417 a VCB is
anyway.

Benjamin Young> The PRs are similarly bot-junk

Wesley Smith: So the self-describing properties of multibase have limited
value, but it's value. So it's good to allow it explicitly in the
specification. anybody have any questions, points to All right. go ahead
and take a look at this approve it if you're an approving type. I'll merge
it after it's been sitting out there for a little while. And yeah. Okay,
that is that small and simple. we already talked a little bit about this. I
guess Benjamin, I'll ping you maybe since I know we ran into the same
problem on a different specification about what to do about the whites
space thing. there's this R as well. Okay, this is raised last night.

Wesley Smith: This is a PR that updates some of the test vectors. it has
the same problem. it's because I built it on top of the previous PR. That's
why. So, let me go ahead and hide the white space. All right. So yeah, this
PR is on top of a different PR. So it looks like there's more in it than
there actually is. basically this PR just updates the test vectors to use
the correct seabore tag. that's it.

Wesley Smith: I actually will need to go back to this PR and make sure that
the generated barcode images are updated as well because I don't think this
PR currently does that. so this PR is actually not ready to be merged.
because I think it should include updates to the images as well. but other
than that, I don't know if it needs a tremendous amount of discussion. It's
really just a PR that bumps the test vectors to use the correct and modern
Cboard tag. any questions, discussion points? All right. so I will make
sure that that PR gets updated to bump the images of the barcodes as well
and figure out what we're doing with that whites space thing.

Wesley Smith: I think that's it for Rs. All right. So, there are basically
three content PRs out at the moment. one of them we need to figure out a
technical hiccup. The other two need a little bit of time. I think we can
go ahead and move into issue Noting that Greg isn't here. I guess does
anybody want to run the data integrity portion of the call in Greg
Bernsteinstead because now is the time that we'd be doing the switch.

Dave Lehn> looking at that whitespace churn commit you can see it went from
0a to 0d0a.

Wesley Smith: Okay, Dave Longley.

Wesley Smith: Go ahead.

Dave Longley: The answer is no to that for me.

Dave Longley: But we could just state the one there's at least one update
from that group which is that the final report got merged. there's still a
little bit more to do over there with CCG process but that's making its way.

Dave Longley: This is for the data integrity quantum safe specification.

Wesley Smith: Excellent. That's great news.

Wesley Smith: Thanks, go ahead, Avon.

Ivan Herman: The question is…

Ivan Herman: if the CCG finish what it has to do then am I allowed to move
over the repo to this task force right away or…

Ivan Herman: do we have to wait? the CCG at the CCG.

Dave Longley: I think we still have to wait for one other process thing to
happen.

Dave Longley: I wouldn't want to move it prematurely. Yep. Yes,…

Ivan Herman: No, what I'm saying is once that is done, is it okay if I move
it over? Dave Longley:

Dave Longley: I believe so. someone I think Greg's following that process
and he will let you know when it's done.

Ivan Herman: Okay, actually ping me and then I will do it.

Dave Longley: Yep. Thanks, Von.

Wesley Smith: Okay, cool.

Wesley Smith: Anybody have anything else to say about the data integrity
work? All right. If not, let's do some barcode issue processing. there's a
fair amount of issues open on the spec and they are completely untagged on.
So, let's start from the oldest stuff from 2024.

Dave Longley> which we don't want, so we will want to not do that (changing
line endings from \n to \r\n is not desirable)

Wesley Smith: When implementing the specification, I came across a few
minor issues with the test vectors. it looks like there has been a fair
amount of discussion something relating to the check sum digit being
incorrect in an MRZ. However, I think that the issue this person is
pointing out is at the barcode slashMRZ conformance layer and not the VC
barcode correctness layer, if that makes sense. the barcode that was
augmented or the MRZ that was augmented had an incorrect check some digit
something to that effect.

Wesley Smith: I don't know if this has been updated. I was mentioned in a
issue that's been closed. So, let's go see what happened there. Updated
barcodes with the correct header information will be in slow shortly,
excuse me. And that was rge That doesn't have anything to do with the MRZ
example that they discussed. So, I don't think this issue can be closed
without at least looking into see if that checks some well, I guess it's
good for the group to discuss.

Wesley Smith: If there is an incorrect check sum in the MRZs on one of
these credentials, that's presumably something that we would want to fix.
Although it doesn't actually impact our ability to verify the verifiable
credential. it does make the underlying barcode look wonky if you're using
some verification flow that also checks things like check some digits in an
MRZ. folks have thoughts about thoughts about that.

Wesley Smith: Go ahead, Dave Longley.

Dave Longley: is this whatever version of myself replied to that two years
ago. that person is gone. is this just based on an example that we have
that is not matching a check sum and… Dave Longley:

Wesley Smith: Yeah, it looks like on one of the examples,…

Dave Longley: so yeah so it seems like we just have an example we should
fix.

Wesley Smith: one of the numbers in the MRZ should be different to be a
correct check sum,…

Dave Longley: I'm sure we don't want to have an example that has an
incorrect check sum.

Wesley Smith: right? Yeah.

Dave Longley: So we will want to do that.

Wesley Smith: And we need to check if that actually is still true or if as
you say a version of myself from two years ago fixed that and then didn't
say anything on this issue. that is that a bug?

Ivan Herman: It's about

Wesley Smith: Is that a bug?

Dave Longley: Yeah.

Wesley Smith: That is a bug. Dave Longley from 2024. The same previous Dave
Longley.

Dave Longley: He's not on the call.

Wesley Smith: Yeah, right.

Wesley Smith: Can you speak to what you're saying here, Dave Long?

Dave Longley: I believe at some point during the development of the
contexts here,…

Dave Longley: a context was produced that was a later version from what is
currently in the spec. and that later version had an error in it or was
doing something that the group decided not to do. and we might just want a
note somewhere that says don't use version two. I think these are all
marked as I hope they're all marked as RC something something anyway.

Dave Longley: But this is my vague memory that we published something and
then we were like no actually that was a bad idea. Let's just keep version
one.

Wesley Smith: Yeah. So that's for the VDL context…

Wesley Smith: which is why this is linked into the Update examples to use
proper tur. So I think the tur bit string stat list was the term
incorrectly added to the VDL vocab when we decided this actually live in
the VC barcodes space. That is my understanding. that's…

Dave Longley: And that might already have been fixed.

Wesley Smith: what I'm looking at as well.

Dave Longley: If you didn't see or hear it though, Avon's hand went

Wesley Smith: Ivonne go ahead. Thank you.

Ivan Herman: For me this raises a separate issue.

Ivan Herman: So it is related to this but finish what you started.

Wesley Smith: …

Wesley Smith: we have a pages issue.

Ivan Herman: So that raises to me the

Wesley Smith: There's an example that uses the incorrect version. Okay,
there are two examples. I know that the test vectors should not do that.
Yeah, so the test vectors are correct but some of the previous examples in
the specification use the incorrect definition. go ahead Ivon.

Ivan Herman: question which we may not want to answer right now. But in
which vocabulary and which context file will the terms that we define here
land?

Wesley Smith: Yeah. …

Wesley Smith: they currently live at…

Ivan Herman: No, but that's not My question is where it will be.

Wesley Smith: where it actually didn't work. I'm not sure I totally
understand the question.

Ivan Herman: Will we extend the current vocabularies that we have already
or not? I mean again we don't have to answer that but at some point in time
we will have to answer that.

Wesley Smith: So, currently the VC barcodes spec has its own data model
that includes these definitions.

Wesley Smith: Are you talking about are you suggesting that some of the
terms defined in that data model such as tur bit strings tless entry would
be better to live elsewhere.

Ivan Herman: I question I am asking I mean we have already a vocabulary for
VC we have a vocabulary for DI we can extend those things I am not sure
that adding new vocabularies all the time is really good for usage so
that's…

Dave Longley> `Verifiable Credential Barcodes v1.0
<https://w3id.org/vc-barcodes#TerseBitstringStatusListEntry`>

Wesley Smith: Right. Go ahead.

Ivan Herman: what I'm asking that's

Dave Longley: So we do have some URLs that are defined the URL for example
for the tur bitstring status list entry lives at w3id.org. This is a
similar situation with some of the data integrity terms and some other ones
that happened in the space that went to production systems before we had a
working group that was able to handle the spec and do something with the
vocabulary. So, I do expect that we're going to at least say that these
URLs are at these locations where we talk about the definitions of them.

Dave Longley: I don't remember exactly what we did for that Ivon, but we
have similar URLs elsewhere in VC space if you understand what I'm saying.
Yeah.

Ivan Herman: Yeah. No,…

Ivan Herman: I understand what you say. We will have to check. I don't
remember either. I remember that we had this. It's in the DI area because
in the VCDM it's clear it's W3C URLs all along. But for the DI indeed we
have this. We will have to check that and again I'm not saying we have to
do it right now but that has to be cleanly done and in the same spirit as
it is done elsewhere.

Ivan Herman: All right.

Dave Longley: Just so we're clear, Wes, what you're typing there, you're
saying it has the correct vocabulary, but the link there is to a context,
not the vocabulary.

Wesley Smith: Right. Thank you.

Wesley Smith: Okay. this is important but not critical. That sounds good
first issue. Very true.

Wesley Smith: If anybody wants to fix this, this would be, control F vdlv2
and put in VC barcodes v1. I think that is good.

Wesley Smith: Priority two and good first issue.

Dave Longley: Yeah, the thing you just said …

Dave Longley: if there is someone who wants to do a first issue, if you
copy and paste those two URLs in there and say that's what needs to happen,
it's more likely that someone could grab it as a first issue.

Wesley Smith: As a first issue that Jason LDBC

Wesley Smith: Easy text.

Wesley Smith: How's that look?

Dave Longley: Yeah, I think that's right.

Dave Longley> https://w3id.org/vdl/v2> => https://w3id.org/vc-barcodes/v1>

Wesley Smith: for all the hundreds of people on this call desperate to get
their hands dirty, that would be a great place to start. All right. next
issue, outdated R to bitstring conversion. Again from 2024, the new
definition of fishing status entry includes the status size and status
messages that cannot be derived from Tur Manu said, "Yep, that's not
supported. Does this create a problem?" It does create a problem so that's
reiterating the issue.

Wesley Smith: I guess the only way to fix is either to put them back into
the bitst string status list or pass them as an input of the conversion
algorithm. But then the verifier needs to know those parameters in advance.
there's some historical context here that I'm missing about the status, no
pun intended, changes of these properties in vision set entry. anybody have
context to share about those properties. Stay long.

Wesley Smith: Go ahead.

Dave Longley: Those are some optional properties that are part of the spec
for bitstring statusless entry that I think they made it into the spec.
There might have been two implementers that were interested in using those
properties…

Ivan Herman: You mean the B string pack?

Dave Longley: but they were kept as optional. in the bitstring status list
spec they don't make any sense for bitstring statusless entry and they
would definitely cause size problems for those entries defeating the
purpose of having it be tur and small. I think the spec should just say
that those properties aren't supported by TUR bitstring status lists. And
so if you have a bitstring status list that you want to express as a TUR
one and it has status size and status message then that's not supported
because you'll lose that information.

Wesley Smith: What's close?

Ivan Herman: In the Bitspring spec,…

Ivan Herman: the official one, the word Tur does not arise at all.

Dave Longley: That's right.

Dave Longley: The tur bitstring status list entry is new and introduced by
VC barcodes. it's a way to express status list information in a barcode in
a very tur or…

Ivan Herman: Okay. But…

Dave Longley: very small concise way.

Ivan Herman: then the question which maybe that's what you were raising is
that this should be added to the bitstring status and…

Ivan Herman: not the barcode specific thing. Isn't that correct?

Dave Longley: …

Dave Longley: where it lands and that might be a better place for it to
land certainly. where it lands is a separate question from if you use this
it must also have status size and…

Wesley Smith: All right.

Dave Longley: status message. I don't see any reason why it must have those
optional properties. And it would defeat the purpose of using it if it did.

Wesley Smith: So, it sounds like we're essentially on the same page. Agreed
that potentially down the line there are better places for this term to be
defined than here. But right now it is defined here and that is a separate
question from what the issue is asking. I think that we just need to add a
sentence to the specification that says they're not supported and then
close this issue. so I will add this comment to that effect and tag it
similarly as a good first issue. Wow. And prior is there a priority three?
no. Okay.

Wesley Smith: I'll just call it a good first issue. I don't think that's
super critical. All right. anything else anyone want to say on that topic?
Sorry, I'm very hyper aware that I can't hear if people have their hands
up. It's stressing me out.

Dave Longley: There are no hands up.

Wesley Smith: All right. So, let's go ahead and maybe do one more issue.
this is my issue from 2024. allow multibase encoding for driver's license
VCBs. yeah, this is the issue that I just raised a PR for last night. So,
we don't need to talk about it. It will close when that is I lied. one more
issue from 1025. It's possible to put a bare bp in a QR code.

Wesley Smith: This is an issue from a time where the specification did not
allow the use case where you just stick a VC in a barcode. So, it looks
like Manu this PR got merged.

Ivan Herman: new kid.

Wesley Smith: Manu just didn't use the keyword to close this issue. I think
this issue can be closed. anybody disagree or feel differently?

Wesley Smith: Nuke it for more of it discussed on 28 issue is outdated and
no longer applies back explicitly supports this use case in both session.
All right. we are about out of time. Remind me folks, this is supposed to
end at five minutes to the hour, It's not supposed to go to the hour. All
right. we're about out of time. thank you everyone for the time and effort
today. had some good discussion and I will see you folks next week. Meeting
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