At 8:13 PM -0400 10/5/00, Ulf Möller wrote:
Sometimes I have the impression that most of my comments on the
OpenPGP drafts fall in the "gone unnoticed" category (I first pointed
it out on September 16th, 1998, again on October 13th -- RFC 2440 was
published in November --, once more on February 10th, 1999, and again
on December 23rd after a cryptic note on the subject appeared in
2440bis-00); but we actually have the following text in the latest
draft:
* PGP 2.6.X and 5.0 do not trim trailing whitespace from a
"canonical text" signature. They only remove it from cleartext
signatures. These signatures are not OpenPGP compliant --
OpenPGP requires trimming the whitespace. If you wish to
interoperate with PGP 2.6.X or PGP 5, you may wish to accept
these non-compliant signatures.
You're welcome.
I've said this a number of times, and I think it bears repeating.
If I get a request about OpenPGP that is vague, I may not do what the
requester intends. The ways in which I can fall down include putting the
wrong thing in the draft, but they are also likely to be that I'll do
nothing when you wanted something.
There are a couple of reasons I might do nothing. The usual one is that I
don't know what you want me to do. OpenPGP has small quantities of
sub-optimal things in it. Usually, those things are there because of
backwards compatibility.
However, at the start of this working group, we decided that backwards
compatibility is important and desirable, but not essential. So there are
things we can, and have, broken because it makes a better standard moving
forward.
So sometimes I interpret someone's complaint as a complaint, not as a
suggestion for a change in the document.
I know that in your case, I've made a number of errors of this sort. I am
truly sorry for this, and I've been trying to make a special effort to pay
closer attention to what you want.
However, it makes it *much* easier for me if you tell me what you want. The
best thing is something like:
Please change XXX to YYY.
For example, I am presently working on getting the PKCS1 updates done.
Thank you for you help. But changing them correctly means that I have to go
dredge out the PKCS1 draft, read it, interpret it, and figure out what to
do. This will take a couple of hours, most likely. In the last few days
I've had several ten minute opportunities to edit. I've had a couple
hour-long ones. I haven't yet had that much time.
If you know what you want text to be, tell me. If I have to do research not
only will I do it slower, but there's a chance I may decide that the best
thing to do is nothing.
In short -- if you make me think, I may end up concluding something other
than you want.
Again, though, I'm sorry I've screwed up. It isn't that I'm ignoring you.
Jon