1) What is the reason to encapsulate clear-text PEM body parts in an
entity of type message/pem-clear, instead of including the body part
unencapsulated (e.g. as text/plain, but potentially any MIME type)?
The latter would provide better interoperation with MIME-capable UAs
that are not PEM-capable (MIME does not mandate any particular
treatment for unrecognized subtypes of message).
I have not read the I-D closely yet but on a first impression, I have
the same question.
If you DON'T do this, then how do you distinguish between signed
clear-text and non-signed clear-text? If all you use is text/plain,
then you have no way to distinguish the two (other than by context).
And I think context parsing isn't part of MIME (but I'm not sure about
this).
I think that the tagging of the clear data is important.
-derek
PGP 2 key available upon request on the key-server:
pgp-public-keys(_at_)toxicwaste(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu
--
Derek Atkins, MIT '93, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Secretary, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB)
MIT Media Laboratory, Speech Research Group
warlord(_at_)MIT(_dot_)EDU PP-ASEL N1NWH