[cifs-protocol] erroneous references to little-endian

[Hongwei Sun]

Andrew,

    We added the explanation about how bit fields are presented in documents to MS-DTYP v2.1.  This information is consistent with the template we have been using to write our currently published protocol documents.  The updated section is attached for your review.

    Hopefully this update can provide readers a clear reference when  using bit field tables in the documents.   At the same time, we are continuing working on the broader issue of the bit fields to improve their usability.

Thanks!

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Hongwei  Sun - Sr. Support Escalation Engineer
DSC Protocol  Team, Microsoft
hongweis at microsoft.com
Tel:  469-7757027 x 57027
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-----Original Message-----
From: cifs-protocol-bounces at cifs.org [mailto:cifs-protocol-bounces at cifs.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Bartlett
Sent: Monday, August 10, 2009 2:41 AM
To: Richard Guthrie
Cc: 'pfif at tridgell.net'; 'cifs-protocol at samba.org'
Subject: Re: [cifs-protocol] erroneous references to little-endian

On Sat, 2009-07-11 at 09:42 +1000, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-07-10 at 09:23 -0700, Richard Guthrie wrote:
> > Andrew,
> >
> > We will continue to work to resolution on the broader issue of how
> > to handle bit fields in the documentation.  Your feedback is much
> > appreciated there.  For this specific issue, in general, for
> > custom-marshaled fields you should see a bit field that follows the
> > RFC convention where the high bit of the first byte to hit the wire
> > is in column 0, and the low bit of the last byte to hit the wire is
> > in column 31 (so that the bits are shown from left-to-right in the
> > order they naturally appear over the network).
>
> Your two statements are inconsistent, and not consistent with what the
> documentation does.  Do you mean to say that I can expect the above in
> future, or that you claim the documentation does the above?
>
> If the bits were numbers, for little-endian numbers, such that bit 0,
> representing integer 1 appeared a the left (the little end), and that
> the numbers in the heading increased 0..31 left-to-right, above the
> value such that for it's natural natural number representation (as
> indicated by the stated endianness) that value == n^2, then I would be
> happy.
>
> > We are going back through the documentation to ensure that custom
> > marshaled fields have the appropriate specification for endianness.
>
> Alternately, can you please point me at the RFC that indicates both
> bit numbering such that (value != n^2) where n is the described bit
> number, and where bits are ordered in a different order to bytes.
>
> Microsoft's documentation is the only place, ever, that I have seen
> this insanity.

I'm still unsatisfied with the situation here.  Will there ever be any progress?

Andrew Bartlett

--
Andrew Bartlett
http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Cisco Inc.
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