ietf-smime
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RE: Authenticated Attributes DER vs BER

1998-04-17 06:02:33
From: "Blake Ramsdell" <BlakeR(_at_)deming(_dot_)com>

In the spirit of "being liberal in what you accept" and
interoperability, I think some language is needed.  How about "receiving
agents SHOULD NOT reorder the SET OF according to DER"?

"being liberal in what you accept" leads to the position that receiving
agents SHOULD reorder the SET OF, in order to accept the widest variety
of input.

However, I believe the spec may reasonably be silent on the issue of
receiver reordering - there's no need for a receiver recommendation if the
transmitted SET OF MUST be DER-ordered.  I agree that the transmitter
MUST DER encode the SET OF attributes, and I agree with John that the
receiver spec should not say SHOULD NOT.

Dave Kemp