Re: New Draft... going forward

[Michael Elkins <michael@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 20, 1997 at 01:13:59PM +0000, Lutz Donnerhacke wrote:
> * Thomas Roessler wrote:
> >Lutz Donnerhacke wrote:
> [Allowing direct MIME encoding of the PGP octet stream]
> 
> >From RFC 2015:
> >   PGP can generate either ASCII armor (described in [3]) or
> >   8-bit binary output when encrypting data, generating a
> >   digital signature, or extracting public key data.  The ASCII
> >   armor output is the REQUIRED method for data transfer.  This
> >   allows those users who do not have the means to interpret
> >   the formats described in this document to be able extract
> >   and use the PGP information in the message.
> >
> >To me, this sounds reasonable.
> 
> Sure, but if software is unable to deal with MIME, the user do have other
> problems than PGP. Even RfC 2015 requires MIME compilant software to deal
> with digital signatures. So the other part does not harm that much. It is
> still possible to pipe a base64 encoded message through a decoder and into
> pgp-compilant software. The only difference is, that today pgp messages
> without MIME headers must be piped through pgp alone.
> 
> In short: Ascii Armor is outdated.

The primary reason ascii armor was chosen was for the case of encrypted
messages.  The way RFC2015 is currently worded, a non-MIME mail user can
simply pipe the whole message to pgp and everything will work just fine
without the need for any additional software.  It also makes even
MIME-compliant software easier to write.

me