question regarding gnupg in my regular signature

Andrew McDonald andrew@mcdonald.org.uk
Sun, 17 Dec 2000 16:29:32 +0000


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On Thu, Dec 14, 2000 at 07:36:33PM +0000, Graham wrote:


> AM>
> AM> PGP/MIME has advantages over the older application/pgp format, and it
> AM> would be nice to see it supported by all the mailers that offer "pgp
> AM> support". The pgp/mime standard in rfc2015 is 4 years old, and lots of
> AM> MUAs seem to support S/MIME. :)
> AM> RFC 2440, does after all say: "An application that implements OpenPGP
> AM> for messaging SHOULD implement OpenPGP-MIME." (See RFC2119 for the
> AM> meaning of 'SHOULD').
>
> You're probably right, but specifically what advantages?
Some are advantages for the mailer, e.g. single MIME standard for encrypted/signed e-mail (PGP/MIME is essentially the same as S/MIME in its basic structure). Some for the user, e.g. you can encrypt and sign attachments along with the e-mail body, you can extract the original message without having to pull off the PGP wrappings yourself. The first of those two is probably one I find most useful. AFAIK, with the Outlook plug-in you would need to separately encrypt/sign any attachments first (I'll double check that tomorrow). I think the 'clear-signing' method was probably created because, at the time, there was no other way to do it. I think with MIME as a standard PGP/MIME somehow becomes 'more obvious'.
> PGP has a plug-in which integrates more seamlessly with Outlook than
> Eudora or Outlook Express. The problem I would think is that you're
> trying to get a MUA (Mutt) which defaults to PGP/MIME under Linux, to
> produce something which can be understood by a Windows application
> (Outlook) for which there is no PGP/MIME support. Despite somebody
> telling me that this difference is not an OS problem, but an
> application problem, most Windows MUAs do not have PGP/MIME support if
> they have PGP.
Actually, I think there are probably quite a few more MUAs under Linux that support PGP in a non-PGP/MIME form than support PGP/MIME. With the Outlook plug-in, it simply processes the content of the text edit window, getting it to do the header/structure modifications for PGP/MIME (or even setting the content-type to application/pgp) is probably more difficult to do from a plug-in.
> AM> By terming my macros "a bit of a cludge". I meant that mutt's PGP/MIME
> AM> support was so nice, easy and clean to use; using these macros seem
> AM> very horrible in comparison. :(
>
> I understand that, but for we Windows users, PGP/MIME seems so
> unwieldy, so non-standard, and suspicious as we try to avoid
> attachments.... Its just your point of view....
Well, if the mailer supported PGP/MIME you wouldn't see any attachments, just as you don't with an MUA that supports S/MIME on S/MIME encoded messages. ;-) Best wishes, Andrew - -- Andrew McDonald E-mail: andrew@mcdonald.org.uk http://www.mcdonald.org.uk/andrew/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE6POnl/LupyPLe7TYRAkqCAJ9/9v6+0yzO3H/aHeQ/2uGaTnpHFACghSJU KREdH5ZLR1JZYlcnIYb9hT4= =e4d0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Archive is at http://lists.gnupg.org - Unsubscribe by sending mail with a subject of "unsubscribe" to gnupg-users-request@gnupg.org