RfC 2440 Signature Types and Web Of Trust

[David Shaw]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2004 at 09:37:21PM +0100, Sascha Wilde wrote:
> Hello *,
> 
> reading the GnuPG documentation and sikimming through the source I
> found that, while signing Keys support RfC 2440 Signature Types 0x10
> to 0x13[0] the Web Of Trust management doesn't take the Signature Type
> into account.
> 
> Is that true, or am I missing something?

That's all true.  Remember that the OpenPGP is (mostly) a message
format, and as such does not define the trust model to use.  The
classic PGP web of trust is actually not specfied in any standard
anywhere.

For historical reasons, the web of trust never used the 0x11-0x13
signature types (except to treat them as identical to 0x10).

> Is there any way of making use of Signature Types with GnuPG other
> than just displaying them?

Yes.  You can use the --min-cert-level option which allows you to
ignore certain signature types.  For example, a --min-cert-level
option of 2 means that 0x11 signatures are ignored.  GnuPG 1.4
actually defaults to this.

David