ietf-openpgp
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Encrypting RFC822 headers in S/MIME or PGP/MIME messages

1998-09-23 02:12:27
At 09:32 22/09/98 -0700, Ned Freed wrote:
I personally favor a message/rfc822 parameter, but I can also see a
case for
putting it elsewhere. What do other people think? [...]

[...]
I considered a content-disposition value, but quickly rejected it. My reasons
include:

(1) This usage is specific to message/rfc822; it doesn't make sense on other
   content types. Dispositions are supposed to apply regardless of type, and
   definitely shouldn't be highly type-specific.
(2) Applications may want to specify a disposition for a message independent
   of security handling. This results in the one field being used for two
   things.
(3) This isn't a disposition per se; it is structural handling information.

I agree -- especially your reason 3 which I realized after my earlier posting.

But, I think there is still a question whether this "structural handling"
information is specific to *just* RFC822.  The premise of my suggestion was
that the structural handling was more widely applicable.  I am toying with
a view that the handling may be appropriate to 'message/...' types in general.

A recent discusion I had concerned the actual handling differences between
'application/...' and 'message/...' (with reference in part to proposing
'application/MIME' vs 'message/MIME').  One view was that 'message/...'
indicates handling that is expected to be performed by a message handling
agent, where 'application/...' suggests some external program;  this seems
to be consistent with the idea that MIME content-types are used for
dispatching to a handling module or application.

I feel I may be going over some old ground here, and don't wish to restart
an old debate, but I would be interested in your view.

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
(GK(_at_)ACM(_dot_)ORG)