Re: PGP/MIME interop testing: Very first steps towards a test suite.

[Ian Bell <ianbell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 1 Apr 2000, Thomas Roessler <roessler@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2000-03-31 15:47:56 -0800, Jon Callas wrote:
>
> > So, popping back to your questions, no, we have to have
> > binary mode signatures, or else PGP/MIME can't sign a
> > binary file cross-platform.
>
> Beg your pardon?  What PGP/MIME does is converting binary
> data to a canonical text representation which matches
> MIME's and OpenPGP's idea of canonical text.  That is,
> with PGP/MIME (or any other signature standard based on
> RFC 1847), all you have to look at are signatures of
> textual data.  MIME does the conversion for you.

Yes, and unless there are absolutely no inter-operability problems 
arising from the different modes of signing MIME messages, the 
openPGP/MIME draft should say "MUST use text-mode signatures", not 
"SHOULD NOT use binary-mode signatures" as I previously suggested.

--
Ian Bell                                           T U R N P I K E  Ltd