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Re: [ietf-dkim] summarizing my understanding of the errata discussion & a proposal

2009-02-05 07:20:35
On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:40:14 -0000, Eliot Lear <lear(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> 
wrote:

No, SHOULD NOT is too strong. Normally, that would indeed be the case,  
but
in specific cases the Assessor (not the Verifier) might have  
information,
obtained by some out-of-band means, what that particular i= meant, and  
be
able to act accordingly. Otherwise (and maybe always), assuming the d=
matched satisfactorily, the i= should just be passed on to the end user
who might make some sense out of it (e.g. Aunt Tillie vs Uncle George).


First, I stuck to terminology that was in RFC 4871 intentionally, with
an eye toward keeping the errata simple.

Yes, but we are currently discussing Dave's errata, which carefully  
distinguishes between the Verifier, which does the purely machanical  
checking of the signature for validity, and the Assessor which decides  
what action to take on the result.

Second, there is a predicate prior to the SHOULD NOT statement which is
important.  However, it has been lost by more than one person indicating
lack of clarity.  Let's try this again:

Yes, I take the point about your predicate. My main target was Dave's  
remark (Mon 02 Feb 2009 19:42:44 GMT)
     Since the new consensus appears to be that i= has semantics that are
     entirely undefined, it does not seem possible that the wg would advise
     showing it to an end user.
But I now see that such wording does not appear in his actual latest  
draft, and the current thread seems happy that the end user should indeed  
be given the opportunity to differentiate between Aunt Tillie and Uncle  
George in cases where the Assessor had insufficient information to utilize  
that inormation itself.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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