In an attempt to clear this log-jam, I propose the following wording
be used to replace the problematical paragraph in the Content-MD5
document:
To generate the value of the Content-MD5 field, the MD5 algorithm
is computed on the canonical form of the MIME entity's object. In
particular, this means that the sender applies the MD5 algorithm on
the data immediately after conversion to canonical form, before
applying any content-transfer-encoding, and that the receiver also
applies the MD5 algorithm on the canonical form, after undoing any
content-transfer-encoding. For textual data, this means the MD5
algorithm must be computed on data in which the canonical form for
newlines applies, that is, in which each newline is represented by
a CR-LF pair. The canonical encoding model of MIME is described in
Appendix G of [1].
with the understanding that there is intention to fold Content-MD5
into the base MIME document(s) prior to either document series going
to Internet Standard status.
--
_.John G. Myers Internet: jgm+(_at_)CMU(_dot_)EDU
LoseNet: ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up