information in the public key block

[David Shaw]

On Jul 21, 2008, at 10:20 PM, kurt c wrote:

> Another beginner idiot's question from me. Please excuse me.
>
> How is it that when I import the PGP public key block from someone's
> webpage for example, GnuPG automatically knows the key ID and email
> address and all the stuff? Is this information embedded in all the
> letters in the key block somewhere? Where?

The key block is just a base64 transformation of the key.  The key  
format is specified in RFC-4880, and yes, it includes email addresses,  
the information necessary to calculate the key ID, and so on.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880

David