Re: What to do with CryptoBinary?

At 17:54 3/26/2001 -0500, Noah_Mendelsohn@lotus.com wrote:
>I don't claim to be an expert on the digital signatures specification,

Thanks for your response Noah. I should've provided a reference, but there 
is really nothing more to CryptoBinary than the schema definition.

>http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-xmldsig-core-20001031/#sec-CoreSyntax
>    <simpleType name="CryptoBinary">
>      <restriction base="binary">
>       <encoding value="base64"/>
>      </restriction>
>    </simpleType>


>my quick reading of it suggests that CryptoBinary is not just any base64
>binary

It is that simple. It's used as the type for SignatureValue, DigestValue, 
X509SKI, X509Certificate,  X509CRL, PGPKeyPacket, and all the DSA/RSA 
parameters. Consequently, it has to be generic, and given we decided to go 
base64 in xmldsig, it made sense to simplify things and just create a type 
for it.

>By specifically naming the
>digital signature type, you will allow behaviors to be applied to any
>information specifically coded in that manner.  The fact that the XML
>schema validation mechanisms provided no additional direct checking is
>unimportant, I think.

Even given what I said above, I'd be willing to take this as an argument not 
to eliminate it -- that's the direction I'm leaning towards anyways <smile/>.


__
Joseph Reagle Jr.                 http://www.w3.org/People/Reagle/
W3C Policy Analyst                mailto:reagle@w3.org
IETF/W3C XML-Signature Co-Chair   http://www.w3.org/Signature
W3C XML Encryption Chair          http://www.w3.org/Encryption/2001/

Received on Monday, 26 March 2001 18:12:25 UTC