- From: Martin Duerst <duerst@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 09:46:52 +0900
- To: "Brian LaMacchia" <bal@microsoft.com>, <w3c-ietf-xmldsig@w3.org>
This should be fixed in XML Schema, not in Signatures, I guess. On the other hand, it's not a bad idea to have line breaks in the Base64, just streaming out something as a very long line (e.g. 1000000 chars) doesn't seem like a good idea. It will cause problems sooner or later. For example, SOAP may be used over mail, and what happens then? Regards, Martin. At 17:31 01/05/22 -0700, Brian LaMacchia wrote: >Folks-- > >Currently, XMLDSIG references RFC 2045 (one of the MIME RFCs) for a >definition of Base64 encoding/decoding. (See section 6.8 of [1].) It >has been pointed out to me that RFC 2045 *requires* that Base64-encoded >content have line breaks at least every 76 characters. Paragraph 6 >reads as follows: > > The encoded output stream must be represented in lines of no more > than 76 characters each. All line breaks or other characters not > found in Table 1 must be ignored by decoding software. In base64 > data, characters other than those in Table 1, line breaks, and other > white space probably indicate a transmission error, about which a > warning message or even a message rejection might be appropriate > under some circumstances. > >I can't see any reason for XMLDSIG to inherit a line-length limitation >that appears to have been there for mail-specific reasons. The SOAP 1.1 >submission [2] removes the line length limitation in their use of >Base64; Section 5.4.3 of SOAP reads as follows: > > The recommended representation of an opaque array of bytes is the > 'base64' encoding defined in XML Schemas [10][11], which uses the > base64 encoding algorithm defined in 2045 [13]. However, the line > length restrictions that normally apply to base64 data in MIME do > not apply in SOAP. A "SOAP-ENC:base64" subtype is supplied for use > with SOAP. > >I propose that XMLDSIG adopt language similar to SOAP and not require >applications to insert line breaks at least every 76 characters. >(Conforming implementation will still accept line-limited encodings >since they have to ignore any found whitespace in the Base64 string.) > > --bal > >[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt >[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP/
Received on Tuesday, 22 May 2001 21:23:56 UTC