Comment on bitmasks in DIS 29500
Michiel Leenaars

Concerns:

2.3.1.8, 2.4.7, 2.4.8, 2.4.51, 2.4.52, 2.8.2.16 2.8.7, 2.15.1.86,
2.15.1.87, 2.18.11, etc.

Comment:
Inclusion of bitmasks in XML components of DIS 29500 adds significant
cost in complexity and performance, as well as in the area of security.
Bitmasks in the spec also break functionality in existing XML tools and
are a vast danger to interoperability with other XML-related standards.
Additionaly, many bitmasks in DIS 29500 are of fixed length (i.e. have
a fixed number of bits) which means that extensibility is extremely
limited. 

Proposed solution:
All bitmask functionality throughout the specification should be
replaced by XML alternatives, e.g. attributes.