25389 2014-04-18 08:37:25 +0000 Define octet string 2014-09-24 21:00:05 +0000 1 1 1 Unclassified Web Cryptography Web Cryptography API Document unspecified PC All RESOLVED FIXED P2 normal --- 1 annevk watsonm public-webcrypto watsonm oldest_to_newest 104074 0 annevk 2014-04-18 08:37:25 +0000 It's not really clear what that means. (Aligning with http://encoding.spec.whatwg.org/#terminology and such would be good here I think.) 111945 1 watsonm 2014-09-22 17:42:02 +0000 I propose: "An octet string is an ordered sequence of zero or more integers, each in the range 0 to 255 inclusive." 112097 2 watsonm 2014-09-24 18:50:34 +0000 https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcrypto-api/rev/245fcde1bf6f 112111 3 annevk 2014-09-24 20:00:14 +0000 Why can't we call this a byte sequence as the Encoding standard recommends? Seems weird to use different terminology here. 112120 4 watsonm 2014-09-24 20:15:53 +0000 (In reply to Anne from comment #3) > Why can't we call this a byte sequence as the Encoding standard recommends? > Seems weird to use different terminology here. I don't see a definition of 'byte sequence' at the link you provided. I see a definition of 'byte' which looks odd to me (I would think a byte is an integer between 0 and 255 inclusive without any implication about how it is 'represented'). 112121 5 annevk 2014-09-24 20:25:20 +0000 Well, you have to represent it somehow in a document. 112122 6 watsonm 2014-09-24 20:27:16 +0000 (In reply to Anne from comment #5) > Well, you have to represent it somehow in a document. What we need in the WebCrypto spec is an abstract type for describing the processing of information within our procedures and in particular passing information to / from cryptographic algorithms described in other specifications. We don't need to define / assume any particular way to represent members of that type, whether in a document, in memory or elsewhere. 112124 7 annevk 2014-09-24 20:46:27 +0000 If you don't represent it you don't have to worry about that part. The larger point here is that we use byte everywhere, not octet. And "ByteString" already has a particular meaning you're not employing here. So byte sequence would be best. 112126 8 watsonm 2014-09-24 20:56:12 +0000 WebIDL defines both byte and octet, with byte being signed and octet unsigned: http://www.w3.org/TR/WebIDL/#idl-octet. This is itself an odd definition of byte. I'm all for consistency / alignment, it's just not clear who we should be consistent / aligned with ;-) 112128 9 annevk 2014-09-24 21:00:05 +0000 Fair. I think there's an open bug on IDL.