At 09:58 PM 2/10/99 +0100, Ulf Möller wrote:
|I reported that on the OpenPGP list before RFC 2440 was issued, but
|for some reason the RFC authors ignored my post.
|
|In PGP, trailing whitespace is removed as part of the clearsig
|encoding (which is the only situation where trailing whitespace can
|get lost in the transport). It is not part of the signing operation
|and should not have been mentioned in the section quoted above.
I didn't ignore it, I'm pretty sure we discussed it.
I believe that for OpenPGP, this is the right thing to do, and that for
*any* object in "canonical text" form, trimming trailing white space is a
Smart Thing To Do.
Now, an *implementation* of OpenPGP has to be always generating thingies
trimmed. When it does, they will interoperate with the old versions just
fine. The only subtle gotcha here is that when *receiving* a signed text
object, a smart implementation won't throw a hissy fit if the text object
hasn't been trimmed; it will just roll its eyes and mutter "get with the
program, geezer" under its breath. This is the old principle of "be liberal
in what you accept and conservative in what you generate."
Jon
-----
Jon Callas jon(_at_)pgp(_dot_)com
CTO, Total Network Security 3965 Freedom Circle
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