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Re: [openpgp] Fingerprints

2015-04-15 15:04:43
On Wed, 2015-04-15 at 12:11 -0700, Jon Callas wrote:
There was a proposal that floated around that defined an extended
fingerprint to be an algorithm number followed by the actual bits.
For example, ASCII-fied 23:ABCDEF0123...FF. There's an obvious binary
representation. There's an obvious way to truncate that as well --
just decide if you truncate little-endian or big. (Personally, despite
being a little-endian bigot, this is a place where network byte order
is even to me the obvious win.)
The major advantage of this is that you can define it and then you
never have to change it again. We don't have to have any arguments
over what hash function is proper to use, etc. An implementation can
decide to support or not support whatever.
+1

But shouldn't one define better the number to be either a string?
Sure a one byte number with 255 possible future algorithms seem plenty
enough, but people also once thought that about 32bit IPv4 addresses,
two digit year numbers and so on.

:-)

Cheers,
Chris.

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