not-dash-escaped option ?

[Toxik - Fabian Rodriguez]

Hello,

I was recently asking this in view of the explanation I found for the option
"not-dash-escaped" in the GnuPG man file.

> > > What exactly is a "patch file" ?
>
> > The output of diff(1) which can be used as input to Larry Wall's
> > great patch(1).
>
> These are pretty much popular utilities in the GNU (or Unix) world.

(note: the Man page I refer to is the one at
http://www.gnupg.org/gpgman.html)

Thank you, Werner, Lionel, for the answers. I suspected that but found
curious that a programmer's reference would've replaced the RFC description.
In asking this question directly to the list I admit I passed my right to
"RTFM" :)

The RFC 2440 mentions:
"7.1. Dash-Escaped Text
[...] This prevents the parser from recognizing armor headers of the
cleartext  itself."

The Man page explanation mentions one of the "advantages" of having dashes
escaped, not the real reason. And if you use the option in GPG, then the
"NotDashEscaped: You need GnuPG to verify this message" is included in the
signed message, hardly a better explanation.

Another rather disturbing remark, in the FAQ (6.8):
"Good mail clients remove those extra dashes when displaying such a message.
"
Why should they ?

Although it's a detail, it is rather unlogical to expect regular users to
put up with this kind of modification of an original message, and
particularly contrary to the principle of a signature's role to guarantee
integrity of a message. Is OpenPGP capable of evolving towards a version
that would better suit "everyday users" of this technology ? How can OpenPGP
advocate for a standard where a single "-" will break the parser ?

Would it be possible for the MAN page of GPG to be updated to reflect this,
instead of the (unix/patch files)-centric view of its usage ?

I'd like to submit this as a comment to the RFC. Does anyone here know how
to go about this ? I took a look at rfc-editor.org but didn't find any
obvious way to send this.

Cheers,

Fabian Rodriguez - Toxik Technologies Inc.
www.Toxik.com - OpenPGP ID: 0x5AF2A4D5