Re: Lack of PGP signatures

At 02:07 PM 7/3/96 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>At 12:15 PM 7/3/96 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>>On my Mac I just entered this answer, cut it to the clipboard, launched
>>PGP, clearsigned it, and pasted the result back into the Eudora window for
>>the new mail.
>
>But of course the signature doesn't check.  (I suspect Eudora line wrapping.)

Yep.  Been there, done that.

Line wrap problems are the bain of PGP sigs.  This is the reason that most
PGP shells will force a line wrap before generating the signature.  The only
way around it is to turn off all line wrapping or have a utility do it for
you before signing it.

I am wondering why there is not a signing option that ignores all
non-printing characters.  Might fix some of these problems...  (Can anyone
think of a reason this would be a "Bad Thing(tm)"?)

---
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|         http://www.teleport.com/~alano/          | alano@teleport.com  |

> I am wondering why there is not a signing option that ignores all
> non-printing characters.  Might fix some of these problems...  (Can anyone
> think of a reason this would be a "Bad Thing(tm)"?)

Moving spaces could change meaning on a legal doc.

A nonsense example is the alt.folklore.urbane "cow orker" tag...

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On Wed, 3 Jul 1996, Alan Olsen wrote:
> I am wondering why there is not a signing option that ignores all
> non-printing characters.  Might fix some of these problems...  (Can anyone
> think of a reason this would be a "Bad Thing(tm)"?)

     IANACE, but off the top of my head I'd say clear signing binaries. 


Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@crash.suba.com

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On Wed, 3 Jul 1996, snow wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Jul 1996, Alan Olsen wrote:
> > I am wondering why there is not a signing option that ignores all
> > non-printing characters.  Might fix some of these problems...  (Can anyone
> > think of a reason this would be a "Bad Thing(tm)"?)
> 
>      IANACE, but off the top of my head I'd say clear signing binaries. 

It is not possible to clear-sign binaries with PGP.  The point of clear-signing
is to have signed text that is readable to people who don't have the software
necessary to process the text.  It would make sense to clearsign a file that
is base64'ed or uuencoded, which wouldn't alter the contents of the file.  I
can't see how such an option would be harmful, except that it might lose some
characters that are important to the context of the message.

- -- Mark

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