Subject: Re: Bad Armour Headers

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 10:45:24 -0800

On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 10:01:55 -0800 David Shaw 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>Whatever (reasonable) magic number is used as the maximum number 
of 
>columns, I am confident there is a word wrap setting that will 
clobber >it.

but, as Ian pointed out, if the maximum number of columns is 
limited to the minimum number of columns in an armored message 
(i.e., 64 characters)
then any 'wrap' that accepts the message block, would have no 
problems
with the comment or version lines,

>This problem basically exists in the "Comment" and "Version" 
>header lines.  

so a helpful fix would be to suggest a 'SHOULD' 
that the comment and version lines not exceed 64 characters

vedaal

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---

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:06:06 -0500

> with the comment or version lines,

That is not true.  Armor does not allow spaces, so it's essentially a
64 character long "word".  Most editors only break on spaces.  They
won't break words to wrap them.

David

---

From: Ian G <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2006 14:17:07 +0000

David Shaw wrote:
...
> won't break words to wrap them.

The operative word there is 'most'.  In email
for example, URLs that go over the length limit
are often sliced, hence some people send "tiny"
URLs.

Also, there is another artifact.  Even if the
transporting app doesn't slice your armour lines
in half, it may insert extra lines or spaces as
if it was slicing it in half.

Which brings me to another point:  Whatever slicing
it does, if it *only* inserts whitespace, what you
can then do is strip out *all* whitespace and you
are left with pure armour.  It's possible to parse
that as a single block, as the original line length
is not part of the armour itself.

However, this strategy is only possible if you can
easily identify the start and end of the armour.

Which means we have to be quite clear about how
the BEGIN, END and Comments: sections are organised.
The less flexibility the better there - I'd not be
keen on any multiline MIME-style overflow.

Just some thoughts.

iang

---

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 15:38:29 -0500

> if it was slicing it in half.

But again, it "may" also insert free-email ads in the middle or
pdf-ize the whole thing, or helpfully reformat into one long line.
Who is to say it can't?

So yes, "most" is indeed the operative word.  If a new form of
corruption doesn't reach the most level, then this is a treadmill I'm
very reluctant to get on.  For every potential brokenness we
conjecture and accomodate for, there will be some new form of mangling
that comes along.

David