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Re: Media type for PGP message?

2014-10-17 03:26:06
Tim

I realise that the Applications Area is redundant and will soon be
exterminated, but, perhaps, it just might linger on long enough to
provide a home for a discussion of a new media type:-); the apps-discuss
list could just do.

Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Bray" <tbray(_at_)textuality(_dot_)com>
To: "John Levine" <johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com>
Cc: "scott" <scott(_at_)kitterman(_dot_)com>; "IETF-Discussion Discussion"
<ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 9:51 PM
Subject: Re: Media type for PGP message?


A new version of I-D, draft-bray-pgp-message-00.txt
has been successfully submitted by Tim Bray and posted to the
IETF repository.

Name:           draft-bray-pgp-message
Revision:       00
Title:          The OpenPGP Message Format
Document date:  2014-10-16
Group:          Individual Submission
Pages:          6
URL:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-bray-pgp-message-00.txt
Status:         https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bray-pgp-message/
Htmlized:       http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bray-pgp-message-00

“Real” HTML: https://www.tbray.org/tmp/draft-bray-pgp-message-00.html

Abstract:
   RFC 4880 specifies the encoding for encrypted OpenPGP messages.  This
   document registers an Internet Media Type for these messages.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 6:32 PM, Tim Bray <tbray(_at_)textuality(_dot_)com> 
wrote:
As I noted, there are many text-centric messaging channels that are in
wide use but are not in any sense email.

Um, I’m suggesting registering a media type for a message format that
is:

- specified in a standards-track RFC (See RFC4880, sections 2.4 and 6)
- widely supported in software in a variety of programming languages
(references on request)
- currently being used in deployed apps (once again, see
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZYI0JHoJCILEegRJsWufXQ)

Media types are supposed to be useful for dispatching payloads in
well-known formats to the appropriate software modules.  Why is this
controversial?

Anyhow, this discussion has revealed that there apparently isn’t a
registered media-type for this purpose, so I’ll write a draft and
we’ll have something concrete to argue about.



On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 5:58 PM, John Levine <johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com> 
wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article <2684567.G0MAaMzsuj@kitterman-optiplex-9020m> you write:
I went back and looked at a random sampling of the PGP encrypted
mails I've
received over the last couple of years.  100% of them were multipart:

You might want to check stuff that's PGP signed.  In my experience,
the
majority is still ASCII armored, not MIME.

R's,
John