Is there a MIME type for clear text signatures?

[Werner Koch]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2013 17:40, lunar at debian.org said:

> According to RFC3156 [2] which defined `application/pgp-signature`,
> I believe this to be wrong. Can any one confirm this?

No.  RFC-3156 (PGP/MIME) does not really care about this mime type
because:

   OpenPGP signed messages are denoted by the "multipart/signed" content
   type, described in [2], with a "protocol" parameter which MUST have a
   value of "application/pgp-signature" (MUST be quoted).

... the mulitpart/signed container has two parts: An arbittrary MIME
part and a MIME part with a content-type as described by the "protocol"
paramter (e.g. application/pgp-signature).  Any other use is not defined
by PGP/MIME.

> In that case, is there a MIME type that has been defined for clear text
> signatures?

application/pgp-signature is often used.  However, if you already change
to MIME type to an application/foo type, the verifying MUA needs to be
abale to cope with that.  It would thus be easier to use PGP/MIME
directly.

Clearsigned is a hack from the dark ages of the mid-90ies where most
MUAs were not MIME aware.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

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