On 1999-08-08 23:38:32 -0700, rex wrote:
> Why do you call a convention that was in use worldwide for several
> years and perfectly functional, a bug?
While it's not an actual bug, it's _not_ perfectly functional.
There are several issues with traditional cleartext PGP signatures:
- When your mail user agent doesn't support PGP, it has no decent
access to the signed text. Not very nice. With PGP/MIME, the PGP
and MIME parts are essentially orthogonal - any MUA which has a
basic understanding of multiparts has access to the signed data
without any problems.
- Ever seen _real_ character set handling with the traditional
method?
- Ever seen body parts with a content-type other than text/plain
signed with the traditional method? (_Please_, don't come with
the format="mime" brain-damage which was actually generated by
some versions of exmh.)
> And what's wrong with backwards compatibility?
Nothing. That's why Mutt is actually able to _receive_
traditional-style PGP signed message, but sends PGP signed messages
in a format which complies with RFC 2015, a Proposed Internet
Standard.
Note, BTW, that PGP 6.5.1 seems to have some code to handle
PGP/MIME. At least I recall to have seen options referring to this
in some examples. You may wish to further investigate this.
