Re: Signature Subpacket format questions

[sen_ml@xxxxxxxxxxx]

From: Edwin Woudt <edwin@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Signature Subpacket format questions
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 14:12:07 -0400
Message-ID: <3970A977.D1FA0F2F@xxxxxxxx>

> While implementing V4 signature support for a Java OpenPGP library, I
> encountered a few things with some Signature Subpackets that were not
> immediately clear to me. I would be very grateful if someone could
> answer these questions:

i wouldn't take the following as definitive answers, but here's some
feedback anyway.

> * The format specified for both 5.2.3.18. 'Preferred key server' and
>   5.2.3.20. 'Policy URL' is 'String'. Is this string terminated by a
>   null value, like 5.2.3.14. 'Regular expression', or not?

since there does not appear to be any mention of null-termination in
the section on text (3.4), i interpreted "String" to mean that there
is no null-termination.  [ also because many of the field boundaries
can be determined by various lengths that are explicitly spelled out
as well as length definitions. ]

> * What is the format for 5.2.3.22. 'Signer's User ID'? A String like in
>   the previous question?

i interpreted this to refer to what is stored in the body of a user id
packet (5.11) -- so, if the contents of the body are text, it's
encoded in utf-8.  since 5.11 doesn't really say much about non-text, i
don't know about that case ;-)