ietf-openpgp
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Re: [openpgp] "OpenPGP Simple"

2015-03-16 12:58:56
1) Sections of the RFC define what you might call "extras", such as the ASCII 
Armor (including a checksum unused elsewhere in the spec)

Certainly the ASCII Armor checksum is something that could go, since we don't 
need to worry so much about modem line noise. :-) But you have to know enough 
to ignore it.

2) There are a lot of backwards-compatibility things (old-style lengths, lots 
of different algorithms)

One of the things I've tried to work on to help in some of my use cases is a 
modular description for a subset of OpenPGP that is (hopefully) easier to 
immediately grok and/or implement.  It is at 
<https://github.com/singpolyma/openpgp-spec>

One of the things that I did once was to streamline an implementation my 
receiving a number of things well, like old-style packets and lengths, but only 
generating one thing (like five-byte lengths) on the grounds that if you move 
to generating a simplified format, you can then start doing usage surveys on 
when to phase out the old stuff.

But yes, having a simplified profile would be a great thing to do, I think.

        Jon


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