Juan Carlos, Trevor, Ed et al,
What ever solution is taken to the opaqueness may I suggest that we
following the approach given in XMDSig:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/#sec-ReferenceProcessingModel
in that a default process is specified for producing an octet string but I
suggest that we should allow a range of means of passing the input document
and the DSS server may apply other transforms than the default to produce an
octet string.
I have some liking for the simplicity of what Trevor suggests of using
Base64 processed as an octet string but only as the default mechanism.
Nick