

Merged Copy

Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 19:38:21 -0400
Message-Id: <>
To: "John Boyer" <jboyer@PureEdge.com>
At 10:30 9/7/2000 -0700, John Boyer wrote:
>In the Xpath transform text, may I ask you to replace the phrase
>"used in XSLT template matching"
>"used in <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/#ref-XSLT">XSLT</a>"


Other comments on the merge of my Editors' copy and your proposal [1], keep 
in mind I'm desperately trying to keep this specification from growing much 
more! <smile>

1. In I thought we said we didn't need the extra XSLT element, 
instead a proper <stylesheet> element should be included? (Though I honestly 
don't remember so I made the change and rewrapped it).

2. I'm less than comfortable with the Base64 [2] and Minimal [3] changes as 
it adds a lot of text and introduces confusion with respect XPath and 
comments. These are supposed to be the _simple_ transforms.
a. Minimal: "This algorithm requires as input the octet stream of the 
resource to be processed. However, the actual input to this algorithm may be 
an XPath node-set (or a sufficiently functional replacement implemented by 
the application). " I don't understand, does it take octects only or not? 
Are you saying a Signature application can (or MUST) convert nodesets to 
b. Base64: Again, the algorithm takes octects. If nodesets are present, who 
is doing the converting? Should it be restated to say, "If a Signature 
Application has a nodeset and wishes to base64 its encoding it must first 
..." And now we have the Base64 doing XML processing by stripping away start 
and end tags! I'd like to keep this transform clean and simple.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but if other people would like to keep 
these simple, we can give it more thought.

3. I'm not sure if the 6th and 7th motivating paragraphs in the XPath 
section aren't needed. "The primary purpose ..." I'd propose to strike them.

4. XPath section, has (old) text that says, "The function definition for 
here() is consistent with its definition in XPointer. It is defined as 
follows:" However, this isn't the case, right?

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-ietf-xmldsig/2000JulSep/0419.html

Joseph Reagle Jr.
W3C Policy Analyst                mailto:reagle@w3.org
Received on Thursday, 7 September 2000 19:38:26 UTC
