On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 09:56:11AM -0700, Jon Callas wrote:
There are plenty of cases where a User ID contains nothing but
descriptive text ("XYZ Corp Security Alert Signing Key") or non-email
names like an X.509 Distinguished Name.
I agree with people who say that a User Attribute packet is better in
a pure sense. However, the downside of that is that new UAs need
setting/getting/display code. Just dropping the text in a UID packet
is clunkier, but works everywhere.
Indeed, but since a key must have at least one "real" UID packet, a UA
can only be additional information on top of that. That's why I
advise that people doing complex multi field (as in this example) and
non-textual things just make a UA - that way, the required UID can be
displayed by all the existing code so the key isn't quasi-anonymous,
but at the same time the new info doesn't have to create hard to read
UIDs full of quoting characters and the like.
I'm not sure it's easier to pack and unpack multi field data into a
text string (with quoting, etc) than it would be to just define a
structure that you own completely.
David