"Cantor, Scott" <cantor.2@xxxxxxx> writes: > On 10/4/12 4:58 PM, "Sam Hartman" <hartmans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >>Any advice from the SAML community on responding to the following >>comment from Simon: >> >> If the value is not simple or is empty, then the raw value(s) of the >> GSS name attribute MUST be the well-formed serialization of the >> <saml:AttributeValue> element(s) encoded as UTF-8. The "display" >> values are implementation-defined. >> >>Question: what serialization is intended here? An example here would >>make this more clear. > > I think that was my text, possibly. I just meant that it's the XML > representation of the element, but well-formed, meaning that you have to > make sure any namespaces are declared, etc. so that if a parser were to > parse that serialization, it would be well-formed XML. Thanks, now I understand better. I would feel more comfortable if there were a precise reference to what "well-formed serialization" means, especially since there is a MUST here. It ought to be possible to determine algorithmically whether something conforms or not. Sometimes I get the impression that "well-formed" just refers to syntactical correctness, whereas namespace considerations are more semantic. Perhaps the text would be improved by adding a sentence between the two sentences above like this: This means, for example, that the XML code includes all necessary namespace declarations, so that a parser is able to parse and understand the meaning of the raw value. If there is a suitable reference to some XML standard, that is probably better. /Simon