Re: [Cfrg] 25519 naming

Watson Ladd <watsonbladd@gmail.com> Wed, 27 August 2014 15:52 UTC

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Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 08:52:44 -0700
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From: Watson Ladd <watsonbladd@gmail.com>
To: David Leon Gil <coruus@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [Cfrg] 25519 naming
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On Aug 27, 2014 6:19 AM, "David Leon Gil" <coruus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cryptographers have, for quite a while, abused notation and
identified different, isomorphic, elliptic forms. Well, abuse of notation
strikes back.
>
> Part of the problem is that calling a transfer of coördinates to a
different form a 'coördinate transform' is confusing. (I suspect that most
people don't have sufficient topology to realize that different forms have
different topologies.)

They all have the same topology. They don't have the same geometry. The
subject you are looking for is algebraic geometry. If we're going to be
annoyingly precise, we should be annoyingly precise.

>
> Mathematicians have a perfectly good terminology already; why not simply
adopt that, and be explicit about the maps used to transfer between forms?

Well, there is a slight problem: Let X be the curve. Then X has no
coordinates: rather coordinates are a choice of injective map to P^2 or P^1
\times P^1 or something like that. So when someone says "take x+486662/3 to
map onto a curve of the form blah blah" they mean that there is a
commutative triangle with X over P^2 and X over P^2, with the image of the
downwards morphisms lying in the zero locus of the given equation
homogenized, and the thing commutes. (It also all goes over F_p for some
F_p)

The reason X has no coordinates is that a scheme isn't defined to include a
canonical choice, any more than an atlas is a choice of charts in
differential geometry. The definition has already elided all coordinates.

To avoid all this verbiage, which everyone understands (with the usual
criteria about what "everyone" means) we speak in the informal language of
coordinates, and then mentally translate into the language of EGA. I don't
see what's missing from DJBs email in this regard.

Sincerely,
Watson Ladd

>
>
> On Monday, August 25, 2014, D. J. Bernstein <djb@cr.yp.to> wrote:
>>
>> All relevant coordinate systems already have standard names in the
>> literature, and I would suggest sticking to those names whenever it's
>> necessary to discuss the coordinate systems per se:
>
>
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