The minutes from LA aren't out yet, so I'm going to relate my portion of
them. My apologies for not getting this note out sooner. I wrote 80% of it
last week, and then forgot to finish. I had been wondering why I hadn't
seen it on the list.
The draft I released is one that I'd like to make the "penultimate call."
Think of it as dress rehearsal for last call, or my admitting that there
will be minor things to change.
As you've no doubt seen, the significant changes are some more re-ordering
of sections, and a new section of notes on algorithms, and the new
"five-octet" definite lengths (which actually hold a four-octet number).
I've also done a few other things with algorithms.
Rot-N is gone. There is an algorithm identifier for Elgamal
encrypt-and-sign keys. I have a question on this -- we wanted to deprecate
the usage-types on RSA keys (i.e. separate algorithm numbers for, but the
issues surrounding Elgamal signatures make it apparent that it's good to
have a separate algorithm ID for an encrypt-and-sign Elgamal key. See the
algorithm notes for details. Does this mean, then, that we should
de-deprecate the RSA usage-types? I'd just as soon keep them deprecated
because there are real cryptographic reasons for a separate Elgamal ID.
I added in MD2 as a hash algorithm. There are people who want to do
PGP/X.509 interoperability, and they need an identifier for MD2.
We still don't have an OID for HAVAL. Can someone get one? Having HAVAL in
there is nice, but I'm a lazy SOB and it's easier for me to remove HAVAL
than to get it an OID. I also think that if having HAVAL is important to
the community, then there oughta be one person who would stand up and take
it upon themself to get an OID.
I'm going to go over comments on this draft over the next week or three and
produce a last-call draft. Early revisions will go to the usual gang. If
you have something you really, really want done, let me know. I'll make
sure you get an early revision. I want last call to be quiet, so we can
call this a wrap and then get on to the *real* discussions of what's good
to have in OpenPGP.
Jon
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Jon Callas jon(_at_)pgp(_dot_)com
CTO, Total Network Security 4200 Bohannon Drive
Network Associates, Inc. Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 473-2860
Fingerprints: D1EC 3C51 FCB1 67F8 4345 4A04 7DF9 C2E6 F129 27A9 (DSS)
665B 797F 37D1 C240 53AC 6D87 3A60 4628 (RSA)