[X-Unix] PGP funkiness...

[William H. Magill]

On 12 Oct, 2004, at 10:47, Kuestner, Bjoern wrote:

> I am sorry to see this drifted so out of proportions.

Ditto.

> I am one of those who (although on an OS X list) often uses Outlook to 
> read
> posts. Outlook displays not only his sig but also his post as an 
> attachment:
> Very unhandy! It's a blank mail with only attachments.

Outlook is not alone in having problems with signed and/or encrypted 
mail.
"Mail.app" also has problems, although of a different nature.

There has been at least one long-outstanding bug with mail.app over this
issue -- not only the incorrect handling of signatures, but 
authenticating
them and simply "informative" ones (like vcards).

A large portion of the problem apparently comes from the fact that there
are apparently no serious standards on the subject. Several of the more
common "standards" apparently do not interoperate for reasons that are
beyond my knowledge.

Over the years, I've implemented various PGP type schemes and have found
that they are anything but cross-platform compatible, and I mean between
flavors of Unix here. Sun's version was not compatible with DECs, and
neither with Linux, etc. ... even when they were supposed to be and we
were all using Emacs/Rmail. It was most annoying, and ultimately not
worth the aggravation. Someday, "the vendors" may decides that type of
security "will sell" and the problems will be addressed, but today is
not "someday."

Many of the issues apparently have nothing to do with PGP in and of 
itself,
but rather with the implementation of MIME by the mail system.

Or put another way, configuration is anything but "plug and play."

I haven't visited this problem for a couple of years now, but it appears
that it hasn't gotten any better.


T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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