Re: Before I forget - two more spec questions

[dontspam-tzeruch@xxxxxxxxxx]

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Jon Callas wrote:

> At 12:32 AM 4/22/98 -0400, dontspam-tzeruch@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>    1. I didn't read over the draft carefully and I don't have it in front of
>    me. Does it say that the new 5 octet 0xff packet-length MUST be the only
>    packet length (i.e. not at the end of partial-lengths)? 
> 
> No, it doesn't. 

Back to the code - I generally interpret this as an error, but it is easy
to fix (introducing another if-then-else case everyhwere).

> Incidentally, I was talking to PhilZ, who has expressed a desire to have
> partial lengths deprecated. 

Only deprecated for the cases I mentioned (and are fixed in the spec),
i.e. small blocks, headers, etc. or for everything?  They can be useful if
you wanted to use PGP in a stream to do something like SSL does.

They can also be deprecated for compression without much of a problem.

Maybe even Symmetrically encrypted packets (with a "look-for-eof" like
compression) since they end when they end.

Literals have problems since you have to find the signature(s) at the end.

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