ietf-openpgp
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Re: OP and pgp5.0i: some problems

1997-12-03 13:40:40
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on   Wed, 3 Dec 1997 10:33:45 -0800  Hal Finney quoted Maksim 
Otstavnov and wrote:

"Charset" header needs defining. Values defined in 2.6.xi need
enlisting. A mechanism for charsets registration, or embracing
charsets otherwise registered needs defining.

I don't know much about the charset stuff.  Does it just affect how
the signature is calculated, or does it actually affect how the data
is decoded out of a literal packet?

since it is undefined, nobody knows :( 
Probably the question should be sent to Colin Plumb?

There are really two questions the signature software needs to know.
Is the input to be clearsigned vs binary signed, and should the
output
be in text form.  In 5.0 these were combined into one checkbox, but
logically there is another possibility, a binary signed file which
is
ascii armored for output.

Yes.


2.2 Problems with clearsigning

There are still problems however.

(1) 8-bit clearsigning is not described anywhere (I presume). I
strongly believe it needs defining at least as "SHOULD" in OP.

How does this differ from the clearsigning description in the draft?

The draft reads: ..."textual octet stream"... [2.6] West of 
Koenigsberg the phrase will most probably be read as "plain vanilla
7-bit ascii". Am I wrong?

(3) If sending MUA is to perform any other (not cryptographic)
8-bit-to-8-bit or 8-bit-to-7-bit transmutation of a msg, the MUA
must
first do this transmutation, then sign the message, and a
receiving
MUA must first check signature, then perform any other
transmutations.
Right? 

I hope not.  Can't we just leave the messages alone?  

It would be nice but Windows or Mac native Cyrillic codepages will
look gibberish to each other. (Of course there are tools to read
cp1251 on Mac or Unix, but we aim at Mr Common User). Normalization to
KOI8 is currently the only safe way to achive cross-platform
legibility (even MS mailers learned to understand koi8 nowadays).

Trying to translate
an 8-bit Cyrillic document into 7-bit printable US-ASCII sounds like
a
nightmare.

Yes. Unfortunately some older SMTP server truncate or bounce 8-bit
msgs (is it obsoleted by any document?), so sometimes 7-bitization is
needed.

Sorry can't be more help, this is not an area I know much about.

Thank you anyway Hal. I hope MUA plugins developers will keep up the
thread.

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--
-- Maksim Otstavnov <maksim(_at_)volga(_dot_)net> 
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/1059/
--   -maintainer of The Russian PGP HomePage
--     (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Studios/1059/pgp-ru.html)
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