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New 'User Attribute Packet' subpacket - Property Subpacket (type 3)

2005-08-11 05:22:41
Follow-up to post: "The OpenPGP mail and news header" extenssion


Hello,

There are a lot of little attributes we may want to store with the public key. For example:

1 - supports MIME format
2 - supports inline format
3 - supports header format
4 - preferred format
5 - prefers signed mail
6 - prefers encrypted mail
7 - public key url
etc...

There are two approaches I would like to suggest which could solve this:

 - We can assign a subpacket for every such attribute

 - We can create specific subpacket to hold theses attributes:

Property Subpacket (type 3)
-------------------------------------
Subpacket specific data:
   id - identifier - eg. 1
   data - depends on id - eg. true

The advantage of this approach is that one relatively unimportant attribute will not consume whole 'User Attribute Packet' subpacket. Also, it should make deprecating/updating easier since all these attributes are members of one subpacket type.


I really can not decide which approach is better.

'Property Subpacket' does not really describe the purpose of the subpacket, but I could not find any better name. Any suggestions?


Regards,
David Srbecky

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