Re: Mr. Vincent's position paper

It is important to note that while I stand by my comments, I do not support any particular technology.  Further, I suspect that there are technical considerations with which I must become more familiar that will alter or modify the legal position I espoused.

The point of a potential W3C XML-Digital Signature working group, in my view, is not to adopt one particular technology or specification but to synthesize the best ideas from many technologies and/or specifications in order to produce a non-proprietary standard.  To date, I have read and studied Himes' XCI, Brown's XMLDSIG, and Davidson's Digital Receipt (in this order).  I like a lot of what I see in the Brown draft, but I am not yet ready to adopt any draft -- again, this is the point of a potential workgroup.

I am also unclear about the implications and considerations of other XML-related technologies, such as XSL, DOM, and others.  That is, what technologies are likely be become standards, what technologies will be supported in browsers, how do these technologies impact the usefulness of any particular XML methodology?

I have not had time to thoroughly read the XFDL spec; I have only skimmed it.  Noting that I have not detailed the draft (i.e, correct me if I am mischaracterizing XFDL . . .), while I think, as a legal matter, that style sheets should be signed and delivered with content, I like and support the idea of separating, logically and/or physically, structural and semantic/data elements and formatting (stylesheets), which XFDL does not appear to do (??), and I absolutely do _not_ support pages in electronic documents, which XFDL appears to do (??).

In sum, I think it is premature to tout one draft over another.  I look forward to meeting all of you in Boston and to working with you on these important issues in the future.

Todd


-----Original Message-----
From: John Boyer <jboyer@uwi.com>
To: Dsig group <w3c-xml-sig-ws@w3.org>
Cc: Winchel 'Todd' Vincent, III <winchel@mindspring.com>
Date: Monday, April 12, 1999 2:41 PM
Subject: Re: Mr. Vincent's position paper


    Hello all, 
     
    Naturally, UWI.Com is in agreement with the views expressed by Mr. Vincent since these views were the ones that guided the creation of UFDL, the non-XML predecessor of XFDL that existed before there was an XML.  Joseph, do you think it is possible to include Mr. Vincent's position paper on the signed XML web site?  
     
    It should be noted that Mr. Vincent's position has substantial backing within the legal community.  As far as I know, Cohasset is the leading legal authority on the admissibility of documents into a court of law.  You can read a paper they've put together on this issue using http://www.cohasset.com/comm_forms.html.  For those who want to remain as pure as possible, be forewarned that we like this article because it has a nice blurb at the end which talks about XFDL being an enabling technology for legal filings, most of the paper is not really about UWI.Com so much as it is about the types of issues that Mr. Vincent raises and that should be addressed by a signed XML standard.
     
    Thanks,
    John Boyer
    Software Development Manager
    UWI.Com -- The Internet Forms Company
    jboyer@uwi.com