At 2:15 PM -0700 7/28/97, Ned Freed wrote:
In the interest of testing whether there is a simple solution to a complex
problem, let me ask whether making app/mime subject to the same encoding
rules as message/* and multipart/* types will fix any/all the concerns
aboutencoding?
It certainly fixes them for me, and leaves the most desireable characteristic
of application/[s]mime intact: That most extant products will treat it as
opaque.
This seems like the easiest solution to this issue. I'll add a sentence
that says "messages using application/mime are subject to the same encoding
rules as message/* and multipart/* types" to the next version of the draft.
But if vendors take the opportunity to fix multipart/signed
handling when they add support for application/[s]mime, we win big.
I believe that this was the hope all around in the S/MIME implementor's
community. Vendors who still actively ignore multipart/signed will become
as popular as those who have crappy gateways to the Internet.
--Paul E. Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium