Return-Path: Received: from silver.osuosl.org (smtp3.osuosl.org [140.211.166.136]) by lists.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8495AC0881 for ; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:24:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by silver.osuosl.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7277D2034B for ; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:24:01 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at osuosl.org Received: from silver.osuosl.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (.osuosl.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id WFcLQ9LAFnIi for ; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:24:00 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: delayed 00:06:40 by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from jb55.com (jb55.com [45.79.91.128]) by silver.osuosl.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 495DC20343 for ; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:24:00 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d= jb55.com; h=from:to:subject:date:message-id; s=default; bh=XZHQVEM5/tsEy7UVY5QcaFS6Fgk4iQe0cqZU4i05Tbw=; b=ozrBDnlNXXFmQ9XwwwFPAUGfVbZsQGi5dPYPpFCsc2uw9zp13aqwaY6KD7U+nl7I7nt0rkh7KKKn3DsrTIBGjzLKNZTmkDxp3PCo08nc9r7oQxCPJLT8nCbNR0uQWU+J+9G8aHtSyxOBpm2uYkGeNr1uTMsl/EMN4JLZ5/mip5BCwoPWtbqCn0fCqaqciBDEjyEySywC4RZ4jJa7FMzs61A1CTcbS7r0tkaCLlIlnga99Pwel6CceuKWv33G3/4vnVPtkWdKZfK0c89y3Af0yQ5XXY660YFdj0xsk1EXe9L/3Eo2wN0dHZ4TA1orQzCk5NtDGLMf44GtiNLx1Lex1A== Received: from jb55.com (barion1850w-lp130-03-70-49-37-238.dsl.bell.ca [70.49.37.238]) by jb55.com (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTPSA id 5261e6f0 TLS version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NO; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:17:19 +0000 (UTC) From: William Casarin To: Chris Belcher In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 12:17:18 -0500 Message-ID: <87sgl8mijl.fsf@jb55.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:37:57 +0000 Cc: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Base64-encoded descriptors X-BeenThere: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 17:24:01 -0000 Hey Chris, Chris Belcher via bitcoin-dev writes: > I've recently been playing around with descriptors, and they are very > nice to work with. They should become the standard for master public > keys IMO. > > One downside is that users cant easily copypaste them to-and-fro to make > watch-only wallet. The descriptors contain parenthesis and commas which > stop highlighting by double-clicking. Also the syntax might look scary > to newbs. > > An obvious solution is to base64 encode the descriptors. Then users > would get a text blog as the master public key without any extra details > to bother them, and developers can easily base64 decode for developing > with them. I don't think encoding descriptors is a good idea. Encoding makes more sense if it's non-human-readable binary data that you want transfer over a plaintext channel. Descriptors aren't binary data, and have a wealth of useful information that you can view at a glance. Obfuscating this information just to gain the ability to copy-paste doesn't seem like a good idea. > I didn't come up with these ideas, they came from discussions with achow101. I suggested base58 or base62 +hrp for PSBT in id:87zhzlbfq5.fsf@jb55.com [1] for the reasons that you mentioned, so I'm a bit sad that base64 was chosen. base64 isn't really good for double-click copy-pasting, it contains characters such as +/= which aren't always included when double-clicking. I prefer bech32, base58 or base62. In this case, encoding of any kind doesn't make much sense IMO. Cheers, Will [1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2018-June/016151.html -- https://jb55.com