On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Charles Lindsey wrote:
(4) Any attempt at a canonicalization algorithm for mail header signing is
doomed to failure from the outset. It will be ambiguous, too complex,
or inadequate.
And that is a matter you decide by examining the proposals and finding
holes in them. Not by asserting ex cathedra that no solution exists. I
have proposed a canonicalization algorithm which may or may not work. It
should be examined, discussed, and improved.
I skimmed your proposal and it was both too complex and had ambiguities.
The obvious way to simplify it is to stop worrying about email-safety.
It's not worth pointing out the ambiguities until the algorithm is
sufficiently simple to be viable.
Fine. So you are happy to let the news people develop this tool on their
own, and you are not going to complain if it turns out later that they
have omitted some small tweak that would have made it work much better in
mail?
Yes.
That is fine by me. But we shall in any case try to make it as
mail-proof as we can while we are about it.
If you really want this to work in news, I suspect the KISS principle is
far more important than "mail-proof".
- Chris