Jan Pechanec <jan(_dot_)pechanec(_at_)oracle(_dot_)com> writes:
I would urge, as I think I did before, some fairly strong warnings that, at
least until the issues are clarified in PKCS#11 itself, one should be very
certain one knows what one is doing (and what the consequences of one's
choices will be) if one decides to move beyond the safety and general
understanding of the ASCII/ ISO 646/ IA5 letter and digit repertoire.
I'd go even further than that and just mandate MUST ASCII. This is a simple
means of pointing to a PKCS #11 object, not a universal means of communicating
abstract concepts in any language known to man. We've already gone from
"specify a path to load a PKCS #11 module" to something that's fast heading
towards being Turing-complete, if it isn't already. The amount of code needed
to parse and process all of this is getting frightening, not to mention the
semantics of dealing with all of this (is anyone really going to care who the
manufacturer of their HSM is when they attach to it?). The result is going to
be a bunch of partial, incompatible implementations with applications needing
to perform probing to see which attributes the driver they're talking to
supports if they go beyond anything but the basics.
Peter.