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The notation clause fixes the symbols for moduli, exponents, witnesses, challenges and responses, and it adds a separate symbol set for each mechanism family. It is the clause that makes a formula portable, and the one where a copied symbol most often hides a different meaning.

What it asks

Use the clause symbols in every formula you publish or test against, and record which edition the symbols come from. Where a symbol is reused across families with a different meaning, qualify it in the design note so that a reader cannot carry the wrong definition across.

What the revision does

The fourth edition will restate the symbol sets against the revised clauses. The revised tables are not public. The 2009 wording is therefore superseded at publication.

Who it binds

The engineer who writes the formula and the test author who turns it into a vector.

Evidence an auditor samples

• The symbol table used by the design, with its edition (design note)
• The test vectors, with the symbol names the table defines (test suite)
• The review that checked symbols against the edition (review log)

The test you can run

Take one formula from the design note and one test vector. If the same symbol means a different object in the two, the notation has drifted.

Common failures

• A symbol is copied from a paper that uses the same letter for a different value.
• The test vector names a symbol the design note never defines.

How to close it

Version the symbol table with the edition and make the test vectors cite it. A formula without an edition is a formula nobody can reproduce, which is exactly what an assessor will ask you to do. Start with the symbol table used by the design, with its edition and let the row close when it exists with a date and a named holder.

Where it sits against the 2009 edition

The 2009 edition carries Clause 3, and the fourth edition replaces it. The public record does not give the new wording, so this page records the obligation that stands today and the question the revision has to answer.

For the file, this row closes when the symbol table used by the design, with its edition exists with a date, a named holder and a pointer, and when the test above has been run and recorded. The engineer who writes the formula and the test author who turns it into a vector. owns that answer for Clause 3.