Re: [Cbor] CDDL for COSE + EAT/CWT + SUIT + CoSIWD

[Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>]

{noticing this is not CC'ed to SUIT or SACM or RATS}

Laurence Lundblade <[e-mail]> wrote:
    > I am observing how two different protocols that use COSE specify what the COSE payload should be. I am interested because EAT must specify this too. I noticed that they do it different:
    > — CoSWID goes to a lot of trouble to use CDDL via a .cbor control

probably because CoSWID author (Henk) is also CDDL author, and therefore is
more expert at using CDDL.

    > — SUIT just uses simple prose, not CDDL

I think that the question is what kind of advice CBOR and COSE WG should provide to
other WGs about whether or not to explain things with .cbor controls.

    > Here’s the link between for COSE payload for CoSWID. It is in blue in this CDDL that is replicated from COSE. It occurs in  section 7 of CoSWID. <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-sacm-coswid-19#section-7>

    > COSE-Sign1-coswid<payload> = [
    > protected: bstr .cbor protected-signed-coswid-header,
    > unprotected: unprotected-signed-coswid-header,
    > payload: bstr .cbor payload,
    > signature: bstr,
    > ]

...

    > EAT inherits this from CWT so it doesn’t need to say it explicitly.
    > However EAT uses CDDL so it is a possibility that EAT can do what CoSWID did.

That seems like the right way to me.
It's unclear to me which direction will work better for people who are not
CDDL experts.  Consider  that a formal language like CDDL might actually be
easier to understand for non-native-english speakers!

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