Re: [xliff] How to refer to the proper CRC32 algorithm for the track changes module?

I prefer pointing to an external reference
but what we can do is to include the pseudo code as a sample so people
understand what the compliant behavior would look like. 

From:      
 "Schurig, Joachim"
<>

To:      
 ""
<>

Date:      
 03/19/2013 01:50 PM

Subject:    
   [xliff] How
to refer to the proper CRC32 algorithm for the track changes module?

Sent by:    
   <>

Hi everyone,

 

as briefly discussed today in the call
I wanted to hear your opinion how one can best refer to the CRC32 implementation
I proposed to use in the Track Changes module which Ryan prepares.

 

The problem with CRCs is that there are
many algorithms. For CRC32 there are still 3 used ones, using different
polynomials, so one needs to refer to the right one, and then it needs
to be clarified which init and exit operations are done on the calculated
CRC value, because that is not determined by the polynomial.

 

Just so everyone understands: the bulk
of CRC32 implementations (in ZIP, Ethernet, ..) use the same algorithm
and values – but there are more. And if you look e.g. at the English Wikipedia
page about CRCs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_redundancy_check)
you do not get the impression as if you can easily tell which one to pick
(which is in practice not correct).

 

The initial idea was to point to an existing
standard. But that is difficult, because commonly people use a reference
to RFC 1952 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1952.txt),
which includes as appendix only a C code sample of an implementation. For
a formal definition it refers to ISO 3309 (which is not publicly available,
so I could not check the contents) and to ITU-T V.42. The latter is available,
but it covers a lot more items than only the CRC32 generation, which itself
it explains correctly from the mathematical level, but probably not in
a way that would help the average implementer.

 

So the idea was to come up with pseudo
code to make sure the right algorithm and init and exit values are understood.

 

Is this anything you would deem suitable
for a standards document like the XLIFF draft? Or should we only refer
to the mathematical foundations, by pointing to ITU-T V.42 (http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-V.42/en)
?

 

My proposed pseudo code looks like this:

 

Pseudo code to generate the
CRC32 bit-by-bit looks as follows (where it is assumed that the least significant
bit is the rightmost):

 

crc = 0xFFFFFFFF

for each bit in
input do

  if rightmost
bit in crc <> current bit in input

    crc = right
shift(crc) XOR 0xEDB88320

  else

    crc = right
shift(crc)

end for

crc = crc XOR 0xFFFFFFFF

 

Pseudo code to generate the
CRC32 in the typical table driven approach looks as follows:

 

Table generation:

for n = 0 to 255
do

  crc = n

  for i =
0 to 7 do

    if
(crc AND 1 <> 0)

     
crc = right shift(crc) XOR 0xEDB88320

    else

     
crc = right shift(crc)

  end for

  CRC_TABLE[n] =
crc

end for

 

CRC calculation:

crc = 0xFFFFFFFF

for n = 0 to (octet
count of input data)-1 do

  crc = CRC_TABLE[
(crc XOR input[n]) AND 0xFF ] XOR right shift(crc, 8)

end for

crc = crc XOR 0xFFFFFFFF

 

 

0xEDB88320
is the reverse order representation of the coefficients of the polynomial
x^32+x^26+x^23+x^22+x^16+x^12+x^11+x^10+x^8+x^7+x^5+x^4+x^2+x+1

 

 

Thanks for any comments!

(and I hope the code survives the list
re-send halfways formatted)

 

Joachim

 

________________________________

Joachim Schurig

Senior Technical Director,

Lionbridge Fellow 

Lionbridge

1240 Route des Dolines

06560 Sophia Antipolis

France