Re: "Yes, I can handle PGP/MIME"

[David Shaw <dshaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 09:52:03AM +0200, Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder wrote:
> 
> On Thursday 15 April 2004 17.46, David Shaw wrote:
> 
> > Given all that, would there be some benefit in a standard way for a
> > user to advertise that he can handle PGP/MIME?  Specifically, a
> > "features" subpacket bit to say "I can handle PGP/MIME".
> 
> Since this is completely unrelated to OpenPGP itself, isn't this a good 
> case for a notation packet on the selfsig? The big advantage is that 
> this could be specified in the proper document - the one specifying 
> PGP/MIME (well, when it is revised the next time), or in a document 
> updating rfc3156.
> 
> I feel it is bad design to bloat the OpenPGP spec with application 
> specific things like this (even when email is the dominant application 
> of OpenPGP at this time.)
> 
> Notation 'pgp-mime=accept' or 'rfc3156=accept' or 'email=rfc3156' or ... 
> (Hmmm. I like the latter - perhaps there will be other options on how 
> email should be formatted etc., and it would allow 'email=clearsigned' 
> if somebody wants to explicitly discourage PGP/MIME usage.)

I have no objections to this, though a more complex encoding of
PGP/MIME desires (aside from yes or no) may be overkill for the
problem at hand.

David