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Subject: Suggestion for new work - profile for visible signaures
Hello all, I would like to suggest that the DSS TC develop a new profile to handle visible signatures. This profile will enable a client to submit a document to the server and ask that the document be signed after adding a signature field / block to a certain page in certain coordinates and dimensions. The signature block could have some text attributes displayed such as signer's name (taken from the signer certificate's Subject Common Name attribute for example), signature date/time, etc. In addition the signature block could have some graphic elements such as a graphical signature image held by the server in association with the signer's key, a company logo, etc. Additional features may include supporting multiple signature fields in the same document, sectional signatures, etc. The main advantage of this profile would be in connection with document formats which natively support interactive visible digital signature fields. One such (non-XML) format is PDF (recently announced to be submitted as an ISO standard). Other formats may include the XML-based OASIS ODF and Microsoft OOXML, as well as non-XML formats such as TIFF, etc. An interesting challenge would be to design the profile in a generic manner so that it can support as many features without being tied to any specific file type. In my experience visual signatures (and especially graphical signature images) greatly enhance the user acceptance and usability of a digital signature system. The profile can also cover auxiliary activities such as: 1. adding an empty signature field into a document (specifying at document/template design time where signature lines should be in the document, who should sign them, etc) 2. registering a graphical signature image to be associated with a certain signing key. 3. enumerating signature fields and extracting various attributes While not directly involved with the calculation or verification of a digital signature, these auxiliary activities are useful when building on overall solution for document signing. Of-course such activities can also be left aside to be specified as an additional profile or protocol. Thanks, - Uri Uri Resnitzky Chief Scientist ARX http://www.arx.com
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