Will Price <wprice(_at_)cyphers(_dot_)net>:
The word list is a feature we implemented to provide better biometric
properties for key fingerprint authentication.
[...]
Saying that this should have gone through OpenPGP in
the first place is like saying the PGPkeys GUI and whether RSA keys
are silver or gold should go through OpenPGP.
How's that? I don't care how the user interface that somebody else
uses looks like, but I certainly may want to verify their key
fingerprint.
In theory, it's an
interesting concept to write a standard for such things so that
everybody using any implementation knows that RSA keys are silver,
but that's not the role of the IETF.
Coloured icons have nothing to do with key fingerprints.
Fingerprints are an issue for interoperability; GUI details are not.