Then develop a solution that is tailored to those news applications,
but don't pretend that it is for use by end-users. If you try to
solve both problems at once you may end up making it too difficult.
The problem with this discussion is that it has been hijacked by those who
want to discuss all sorts of bells and whistles that go beyond what I was
proposing.
net discussions have a way of doing this, especially when the participants
don't first have agreement on what problem they're trying to solve.
I am only concerned with those applications where
the integrity of the _headers_ needs to be ensured, and admittedly it is
news that provides such applications presently.
right.
However, news articles
tend to wander in and out of mail systems for a variety of reasons, which
is why the system should preferably not break if it happens to pass
through a mail route.
mail systems, and mail to news gateways, mung headers in so many ways
that this may be asking too much.
people who have done this before in the context of email, understand
why canonicalization is difficult. the problems are similar enough that
people who haven't done this before should respect the experience of those
who have. that doesn't inherently mean that new proposals cannot be
examined, but neither can you demand that other people consider them.
one of the things that experience teaches you is how to tell when you're
getting near a rathole.
Yes, canonicalization is difficult, which is why I took a lot of trouble
over it. So please look at what I proposed, and tell me where I got it
wrong, rather than just saying "it is known to be impossible, so there is
no point in trying to do it".
I think the real point is that signing only the headers is not very useful
for email, for various reasons. Trying to make it useful for email is
probably a rathole.
Keith