Jon Callas says:
Armour was a very necessary part of PGP. But now we have MIME, which is
meant for the same purpose - safely transmitting binary data across
7-bit or less mail systems.
There are a number of places where having an armored binary object is
useful. Mail is one. Network transport is another. Any place where the
receiving program is a C program is a third (anyone who is careless enough
to call strfoo intead of memfoo can hurt themselves, and this is a hard bug
to find -- I know, I've done it).
Let me summarize. MIME-things can use PGP. But MIME doesn't have to use
PGP - there could be other, alternative tools. PGP-things may use MIME.
But they may use other tools.
Thus, both PGP and MIME need to be able to cope with armouring objects
they deal with, independently from each other. Of course, when PGP is
used *with* MIME, it is enough to armour only once - but PGP does not
*force* you to armour, does it...
What's the problem?
--
Regards,
Uri uri(_at_)watson(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com
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