ietf-openpgp
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Before I forget - two more spec questions

1998-04-23 12:18:04
On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Jon Callas wrote:

At 12:32 AM 4/22/98 -0400, dontspam-tzeruch(_at_)ceddec(_dot_)com wrote:
   1. I didn't read over the draft carefully and I don't have it in front of
   me. Does it say that the new 5 octet 0xff packet-length MUST be the only
   packet length (i.e. not at the end of partial-lengths)? 

No, it doesn't. 

Back to the code - I generally interpret this as an error, but it is easy
to fix (introducing another if-then-else case everyhwere).

Incidentally, I was talking to PhilZ, who has expressed a desire to have
partial lengths deprecated. 

Only deprecated for the cases I mentioned (and are fixed in the spec),
i.e. small blocks, headers, etc. or for everything?  They can be useful if
you wanted to use PGP in a stream to do something like SSL does.

They can also be deprecated for compression without much of a problem.

Maybe even Symmetrically encrypted packets (with a "look-for-eof" like
compression) since they end when they end.

Literals have problems since you have to find the signature(s) at the end.

--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---