Subject: Dash-escaping clarification

From: David Shaw <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 22:43:30 -0400

Hi,

Section 7.1 (Dash-Escaped Text) of 2440bis05 says, in part, that
dash-escaped text is "the ordinary cleartext where every line starting
with a dash '-' (0x2D) is prefixed by the sequence dash '-' (0x2D) and
space ' ' (0x20)."

Since the most common use of dash-escaped text is in email, both PGP
and GnuPG (by default) also dash-escape lines starting with the word
"From " (with the space).  This is for the usual mbox-inspired
reasons.  If the "From " line isn't escaped, then some downstream mail
system may escape it, thus breaking the signature.

Nothing in the draft seems to discourage dash-escaping more than just
the lines beginning with a dash.  Still, I am concerned with the
receiving side not knowing that these other lines may be escaped as
well (they may match on a dash-space-dash at the beginning of the
line, rather than dash-space).  A sentence saying something like "Any
other line MAY be dash-escaped as well at the discretion of the
sender" would be very helpful here.

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  [email-masked]  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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   "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
      We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson

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From: Jon Callas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 20:53:09 -0700

> sender" would be very helpful here.

It's fine with me.

    Jon