Subject: [announcement] "Efficient Descriptive Data Format" specification and SDK released

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2000 14:23:02 +0100

Efficient Descriptive Data Format preliminary specification and SDK
released

EDDF is an ASN.1-based binary data transfer and storage format that is
structurally similar to XML, but has several additional benefits that
make it much more suitable for use in cryptographic applications,
storage of binary data, and machine processing in general. 

In particular, EDDF is:
 (o) Implicitly canonical. Using EDDF, it is easy to ensure that a
single set of data can only be expressed with a single EDDF document.
This is important for electronic document signing and signature
verification.
 (o) Easier to parse and safer to use. EDDF uses a strongly defined
straightforward binary format, thus elegantly avoiding the
complexities and potential security vulnerabilities inherent to
text-based formats (such as XML).
  (o) Efficient. EDDF documents are, on average, 25% shorter than
corresponding XML documents. 

The EDDF specification is currently in First Draft stage, and the
author invites all interested individuals and organizations to submit
their comments.

The EDDF specification, ISO/ANSI C parser and ISO/ANSI C++ parser are
available freely from [http://www.eddf.org]. There are no strings
attached.

You are invited to visit [http://www.eddf.org] for more information.