On Tuesday, July 5, 2005, at 10:11 AM, Tim Bray wrote:
On Jul 5, 2005, at 8:58 AM, Bob Wyman wrote:
We can debate what it means to have an "interoperability" issue,
however, my personal feeling is that if systems are forced to break
and
discard signatures in order to perform usual and customary processing
on
entries that falls very close to the realm of interoperability if not
within
it. Deferring this issue until the implementer's guide is written is
likely
to defer it beyond the point at which common practice is established.
The
result is likely to be that intermediaries and aggregators end up
discarding
most signatures that appear in source feeds.
Huh?! Pardon my ignorance, could you please provide an explanation
for the simple-minded as to how the absence of a source element in a
signed entry will lead to signatures being discarded? Also, it would
be helpful to sketch in some of the surrounding scenario... -Tim
If a signed entry doesn't have a source element and an aggregator
inserts one, the signature will be broken--thus the aggregator will
either discard the signature or republish the entry with a broken
signature.
Perhaps language like this would work without being too much of a
change at this late date:
"When signing individual entries that do not contain an atom:source
element, be aware that aggregators inserting an atom:source element
will be unable to retain the signature. For this reason, publishers
might consider including an atom:source element in all individually
signed entries."
