PGP/Mime and Outlook (was: gpgme and signature comments)

Ralph Angenendt ralph at strg-alt-entf.org
Wed Jun 23 11:20:11 CEST 2004


Bill Thompson wrote:
> I understand the problems with in-line signatures, but unfortunately many
> of the people I send e-mail to use M$ Outlook and Outlook Express. Outlook
> Express treats PGP/MIME signatures as "hostile attachments" and will not
> let OE users open them by default. The MS Office version of Outlook hides
> the signature attachment as a dat file. At least with an ASCII signature
> the recipient can see the signature and read the e-mail no matter how
> broken their MUA is.
> 
> Is there a better answer to the compatibility issue? Should I just stop
> signing messages altogether? What are other people doing?

Forget about OE or Outlook users and sign with PGP/MIME. How would you
sign Attachments otherwise? Separately outside of your MUA? How would
you sign non ASCII text inline? So much for compatibility, using *only*
ASCII characters would break the language I normally write in.

There are tools for Users of OE or Outlook, which enable them to read
and sign with PGP/MIME (gpgrelay would come to mind, I don't know, if
any of the other plugins are still in active development).

My 2 cents, YMMV, but I do not want to be compatible with MUAs breaking
ever second existing standard.

Ralph
-- 
Ralph Angenendt......ra at br-online.de | .."Text processing has made it possible
Bayerischer Rundfunk...HA-Multimedia | ....to right-justify any idea, even one
Rundfunkplatz 1........80300 München | .which cannot be justified on any other
Tl:089.5900.16023..Fx:089.5900.16240 | ..........grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC
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