Re: cleartext signatures - trailing white space - proposal

["Brian G. Peterson" <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Werner Koch said:
> 7.2. Canonical Line Endings
>
>      As with binary signatures on text documents, a cleartext signature
>      is calculated on the text using canonical <CR><LF> line endings.
>      The line ending (i.e. the <CR><LF>) before the '-----BEGIN PGP
>      SIGNATURE-----' line that terminates the signed text is not
>      considered part of the signed text.
>
>      Also, any trailing whitespace (the characters <SPACE> (0x20),
>      <TAB> (0x09), <CR> (0x0D) and <LF> (0x0A)) at the end of any line
>      is removed and replaced by the sequence <CR><LF> for the purpose
>      of cleartext signature calculation.

I would modify Werner's proposed text like so, for grammatical clarity:

       When calculating a cleartext signature, trailing whitespace
       (defined as the characters <SPACE> (0x20), <TAB> (0x09),
       <CR> (0x0D) and <LF> (0x0A)) at the end of any line shall be
       removed and replaced by the sequence <CR><LF> for the purpose
       of calculating the cleartext signature.  This protects against
       a failure of a valid signature due to many conversions that may
       occur in text editing tools or in transport.

I think it is important to clarify both the definition and a little of the
reasoning behind this for readers and implementers of the RFC.

Regards,

    - Brian