25387 2014-04-18 08:00:15 +0000 BigInteger 2014-05-12 08:38:04 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified Web Cryptography Web Cryptography API Document unspecified PC All RESOLVED WONTFIX P2 normal --- 1 annevk sleevi bzbarsky d public-webcrypto oldest_to_newest 104071 0 annevk 2014-04-18 08:00:15 +0000 Was https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcrypto-api/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview.html#big-integer reviewed by TC39? Might be worth asking on es-discuss. Also, since it's a view on an ArrayBuffer, why are you saying it's big-endian? That should not matter with views. 104077 1 bzbarsky 2014-04-18 15:43:21 +0000 Anne, I don't think this is defining a view. What this is saying is that the Uint8Array holds the bytes that represent an integer, in big-endian order. So for example, the representation of 5 million would be a Uint32Array of length three, containing the values 76, 227, 215, since 76*255^2 + 227*255 + 215 = 5000000. Consumers would be expected to do that sort of computation themselves to reconstruct the integer. That's why the endianness matters. 104078 2 bzbarsky 2014-04-18 15:44:56 +0000 > would be a Uint32Array Uint8Array, of course. 105542 3 d 2014-05-09 16:26:10 +0000 I was confused by this too. If you search for "big" in https://github.com/w3ctag/spec-reviews/issues/3 you'll find some back-and-forth where its purpose was clarified. I think if it were renamed ByteSequence, or just left as Uint8Array, it would be clearer. But it doesn't really matter since it's just a typedef, so I defer to the spec editors as to what they think best balances confusion vs. clarity. 105676 4 sleevi 2014-05-12 05:57:33 +0000 I'm going to close this as WontFix, as the original issue was related to adding the type to TC-39, which we're not trying to do, merely describe a typographic convention and short-hand. Boris' explanation in Comment 1 is spot on. The proposed wording in Comment 3 (ByteSequence or Uint8Array) isn't ideal, since ByteSequence leaves ambiguity about the structure of the data, and Uint8Array is sometimes-structured-as-BigInt and sometimes-not. If there are specific proposals on where there is confusion, I'd be happy to revisit and incorporate. 105687 5 annevk 2014-05-12 08:33:12 +0000 The main problem I think is that you want a bigint, and are inventing one on top of a Uint8Array. Ideally there would at least be some coordination with TC39 so that they know this is going on. 105689 6 sleevi 2014-05-12 08:38:04 +0000 (In reply to Anne from comment #5) > The main problem I think is that you want a bigint, and are inventing one on > top of a Uint8Array. Ideally there would at least be some coordination with > TC39 so that they know this is going on. This isn't really accurate, for the reasons explained on https://github.com/w3ctag/spec-reviews/issues/3#issuecomment-41630590 This WG has spent a lot of time debating BigInteger - whether it's a first class type or not. You can see in the archives a previous proposal by Microsoft during the eBay/PayPal F2F that demonstrated a number of problems with trying to describe BigInteger for cryptographic operations. As explained during the W3C TAG review, the typedef here is to annotate a binary format (akin to the ASN.1 DER-encoding of SPKI/PKCS#8) If you're performing cryptographic operations using these, then we've failed as a WG.