[Subject Prev][Subject Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Subject Index][Thread Index]

Re: [LI] [Adminstrativa] Additional policies in place for the LI



On Wed, Oct 27, 1999 at 06:37:38AM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> > 1. Use an ASCII armor (--- Begin PGP -- etc) 2. Use PGP/MIME (RFC
> > 2015) (2) is technically a better option because it allows you to
> > forward PGP signed emails, and sign mails with attachments. 
> 
> The best is to use ASCII armor and keep the pgp sig within the mail 
> (it will come under your regular .sig - like this).  On mailing lists at 
> least.
> 
> This is because, on the Linux India digest (or any other majordomo 
> digest) - all attachments (text files / word docs / s-mime like the 
> PGP keys ..) are automatically displayed in BASE64 encoded format 
> as ASCII (that is, as useless junk characters).

That's probably because the digest format as described in RFC 1153 is
too simplistic. MIME is a userful, well understood and widely used
standard. I'd argue that the digest format is the one which is broken
and needs to be fixed.

If I had the time to reimplement the digest format in majordomo, I'd
implement it as a MIME message containing a bunch of RFC 822 messages.
This way, if one had to subscribe to a digest of digests, everything
still works smoothly :)

Though ASCII armor makes the content readable by a wider audience, it
comes at a cost - loss of convenience. Finding the relevant part and
saving it to a temp file and running a verifier is too cumbersome as
opposed to just firing up your PGP capable mailer.

Ever noticed how difficult it is to get an attachment from a mail 
folder and post it to the USENET on UNIX without using a temp file ?

	-Arun

--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Linux India Mailing List Archives are now available.  Please search
the archive at http://lists.linux-india.org/ before posting your question
to avoid repetition and save bandwidth.