Greetings again. It was pointed out by an implementor that the -msg and
-cert draft use at least five different terms for S/MIME software:
"receiving agent"
"sending agent"
"S/MIME agent"
"processing software"
"user agent"
Since some of these are used in SHOULD and MUST statements, we need to
clarify them. I think the best thing to do to eliminate the last two, and
define the first three. In the cases where we use "user agent" to mean
generic "mail user agent", we can spell that out.
How do these definitions sound?
A receving agent is software that interprets and processes S/MIME CMS
objects, MIME body parts that contain CMS objects, or both.
A sending agent is software that creates S/MIME CMS objects, MIME body
parts that contain CMS objects, or both.
An S/MIME agent is user software that is a receiving agent, a sending
agent, or both.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium