Re: [Cfrg] New names for draft-ladd-safecurves

[Jon Callas <[e-mail]>]

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On Jan 20, 2014, at 7:17 PM, Watson Ladd <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I am proposing that we name the curves with the following scheme: E,
> M, TE, indicating
> the curve type, followed by a prime designator. The prime designator
> will be the concatination
> of the numbers a and b such that 2^a-b=p if such a and b exist and are
> small. Otherwise I'll think of something (Ed448 Goldilocks I'm looking
> at you).
> 
> Any objections? Or do we have consensus on this change, and I was just
> to dense to notice?
> 
> A new version with significant alterations will be hitting the draft
> server in a few days.

I think it's overkill, myself.

Really, there's no reason to designate in the name an Edwards curve from a Montgomery, especially because in the implementation someone's probably going to flip between representations. Only us math weenies really care about the representation, and you're going to confuse the coders.

I spent time talking to Dan and Tanja this weekend at ShmooCon about this sort of thing and I think that our agreement was that names like "Curve 255-19" (which covers both Curve25519 and Ed25519) or "Curve 414-17" (for the curve formerly known as Curve3617) made sense.

	Jon


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