In order to make use of RIPEM more convenient for myself and the other
people in my workgroup, I've been using MIME to 'encapsulate' the PEM
messages, with a Content-type of application/ripem. I've since
discovered that at least three other people have had this idea at
different times, but I couldn't find any discussion of it in the
archives after Marshall Rose's letter of 1 May 1992.
Was this usage dropped because everyone on the list is using a
PEM-aware mailer, or because it is technically unsound in some way? I
can see that it might confuse a mailer which understood both PEM and
MIME, especially if it handled PEM directly but handed off the MIME
processing to an external program (like metamail). However, it
certainly helps to integrate PEM with our setup. Once a stand-alone
implementation such as RIPEM is available then this trick could be used
to add PEM support to any MIME-aware mailer, rather than waiting for
PEM to be added to all of them...
Bill.
Bill Owens
owens(_at_)acsu(_dot_)buffalo(_dot_)edu
104E Computing Center uunet!acsu.buffalo.edu!owens
Buffalo, NY 12460 716/645-3511