Subject: Clearsigned messages and MIME

From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 12:35:56 +0200

How does one implement it correctly?  Add the signatures after
generating the actual octet stream, and then apply a suitable
Content-Transfer-Encoding afterwards?

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  [email-masked]
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898

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From: Thomas Roessler <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 17:38:06 +0200

>Content-Transfer-Encoding afterwards?

That's how I'd do it.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        <[email-masked]>

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From: Marc Mutz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 14:15:16 +0200

> Content-Transfer-Encoding afterwards?

octet-stream? Do you want to clearsign binary data? I think most 
implementations will only recognize clearsigning on text/plain body parts. 
Probably other text subtypes, too.

For text, this is what KMail does:
- - apply charset encoding to obtain 8bit text
- - clearsign with --textmode
- - put the result into a text/lpain body part
- - apply CTE, if any.

Marc

- -- 
Marc Mutz <[email-masked]>

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From: Florian Weimer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 22:12:13 +0200

Marc Mutz <[email-masked]> writes:

> octet-stream? Do you want to clearsign binary data?

Sort of, yes.

> I think most implementations will only recognize clearsigning on
> text/plain body parts.  Probably other text subtypes, too.

Already with some ISO 8859 variants, text might look light random
binary garbage to the casual reader. ;-)

> - apply charset encoding to obtain 8bit text

This results in an octet stream (in contrast to a sequence of
characters).

> - clearsign with --textmode
> - put the result into a text/lpain body part
> - apply CTE, if any.

I see.  Gnus will do the same, in the future.

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From: Marc Mutz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 09:37:39 +0200

On Thursday 02 May 2002 22:12, Florian Weimer wrote:
<snip>
> binary garbage to the casual reader. ;-)

No charset I know of contains NULs. Most of them use CRLF as canonical line 
ends. That's what separates 8bit text from binary data. That even goes so far 
as to require two QP {en,de}coders for the two.

Marc

- -- 
Marc Mutz <[email-masked]>