Clueless "Attachment converted" uses
Raph Levien
s_levien at research.att.com
Tue Jul 16 08:41:00 PDT 1996
Simon Spero wrote:
>
> On a very similar note - could people who are using clear-text PGP
> signatures with mime use text/... instead of application/...; that way
> people without pgp will see the message text without having to mess with
> their mailcaps (that's the way text/* is supposed to work)
I'd hate to turn this into "e-mail encryption"-punks, but I believe that
clear-signed PGP messages should not have MIME types at all. Here's why:
1. All PGP-aware mail reading programs can recognize MIMEless PGP
messages. Thus, adding the MIME type does not help.
2. For all mailers that are not PGP-aware, the best way to handle
clearsigned messages is to cut-and-paste them to a PGP window. This is
most easily done if the message is simply displayed as text. Thus,
adding the MIME type does not help.
3. There _is_ a PGP/MIME standard, and these clearsigned PGP messages do
not conform to it.
ObPlug: premail, I believe, implements the correct policy. Some messages
need to be in MIME format (e.g. pictures). These messages are encoded
using the real PGP/MIME spec. Other messages do not. These are encoded
using plain PGP, and no MIME gorp.
There is a small bug in 0.44, by the way, that causes messages with tabs
to be wrongly classified as needing MIME.
Just my two cents.
Raph
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