Subject: Re: [TSP/RFC3161] PKIFailureInfo values

From: [email-masked] (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 18:31:13 +1300 (NZDT)

Ricardo Barroso <[email-masked]> writes:

>Since a BIT STRING can hold several bit values that can be either 1 or 0, is
>it supposed that a BIT STRING representing a PKIFailureInfo MUST has ONLY one
>bit (correspondent to one of the defined possible values) or can a
>PKIFailuereInfo has more than one bit with value 1 wich means that it can
>indicates more than one valid failure reasons?

I think this stuff was taken from RFC 2511... the assumption is that you can
return several values, the practice is that no-one ever does, so it ends up
acting as a clunky enum.

Peter.

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From: Peter Sylvester <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 12:41:07 +0100 (MET)

> >kabbalistic interpretations to the text ("The placing of the comma in 
> >the second sentence implies that the author meant X, and therefore your
> >implementation is wrong and mine is right").  Saying something like
> >"This is a free-format text field containing information about the
> >error or errors" would convey the intended meaning without implying
> >that there's some particular required way to do it.
> >
> I understand and totally agree with you, Peter. And that's a good 
> sentence, I think.

What about also: 

\0 characters that occurs MUST NOT be treated as end of string indicators.

Multiple values in the SEQUENCE SHOULD be used to line formatting.
CR, LF, TAB   MUST not be used.

A conforming client SHOULD NOT reject response containing these characters.
it MAY replace them by space.

Well, shouldn't this text go into an update of CMP and NOT into RFC 3161?

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From: [email-masked] (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2002 16:32:01 +1300 (NZDT)

Peter Sylvester <[email-masked]> writes:

>  PKIFreeText ::= SEQUENCE SIZE (1..MAX) OF UTF8String
>      -- text encoded as UTF-8 String (note:  each UTF8String SHOULD
>      -- include an RFC 1766 language tag to indicate the language
>      -- of the contained text)
>
>How can the language tag be distinguished from the text?

By a de facto agreement where everyone ignores the requirement for the
language tag, since all messages are in English anyway.  I've never seen one
used, and I don't use them either.

Peter.

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From: [email-masked] (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2002 16:49:29 +1300 (NZDT)

>What about also:

Argh, that makes it even worse!  I don't want to implement a string-parsing
and text-formatting package just to display a simple error message.  I think
"Free-format IA5String" is enough, it tells people what to expect and doesn't
encourage them to try and play tricks with formatting.  For example, I'd never
use a MULTI_SZ value because it's pretty much guaranteed that non-Windows
implementations (most of which will be C) will drop everything after the first
string; I know the display limits so I want to control line breaks, not have
the sender do it for me; etc etc.

Peter.