Peter,
Peter Gutmann <pgut001(_at_)cs(_dot_)auckland(_dot_)ac(_dot_)nz> writes:
Werner Koch <wk(_at_)gnupg(_dot_)org> writes:
How do you want to paste binary data into a contact web form or a Git commit
message? The OpenPGP Armor makes this really easy and, fwiw, X.509 uses a
similar armoring technique.
I dunno because that's not my area of expertise, but somehow every other
software mechanism in existence has managed to get by without needing its own
custom "ASCII armoring" (is there anything other than PGP that does this?), so
I'm guessing it's a solved problem.
The only thing custom about PGP's ASCII Armor is the extra CRC. I agree
that can probably be dropped, except of course there's the
backwards-compatibility issue. As others have mentioned, there are
definitely reasons to keep *an* ascii armor format, especially for
key/certificate transit (ala an x509 csr/crt submission/retrieval).
Regarding PGP/MIME, it might be worth to consider dropping the need for the
ASCII armor in favor of standard MIME encoding. This would also help to sort
out faulty PGP/MIME implementations.
That would certainly help with usability, since 99.9% of the time it's
completely redundant and better handled through other mechanisms.
For messages I agree, it's redundant in most current situations.
Peter.
-derek
--
Derek Atkins 617-623-3745
derek(_at_)ihtfp(_dot_)com www.ihtfp.com
Computer and Internet Security Consultant
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