1994-12-05 - PGP MIME type (was Well now that we’re signing…)

Header Data

From: raph@netcom.com (Raph Levien)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 68baa9720fdb72e49d997a810c634095ee23b134495156f47bbc221171a5586b
Message ID: <199412051953.LAA03423@netcom11.netcom.com>
Reply To: <199412051727.KAA08552@misc.glarp.com>
UTC Datetime: 1994-12-05 19:53:48 UTC
Raw Date: Mon, 5 Dec 94 11:53:48 PST

Raw message

From: raph@netcom.com (Raph Levien)
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 94 11:53:48 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: PGP MIME type (was Well now that we're signing...)
In-Reply-To: <199412051727.KAA08552@misc.glarp.com>
Message-ID: <199412051953.LAA03423@netcom11.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Brad Huntting writes:

> For all of you out there who are using MIME headers:  There is now
> an official mime type for PGP (and an RFC to accompany it).  Please
> dont post messages with type "text/x-pgp" or other rot anymore.

Where? Which RFC?

I just checked the IANA media-types directory (at
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types), and there
was no PGP type listed. I also searched through recent RFC titles, and
found nothing appropriate.

There is of course a draft by Nat Borenstein et al, but it is not an
official RFC yet. Therefore, it is not valid MIME. Last I heard, it
was taking a fairly low priority. The draft doesn't address the fact
that a clearsigned message is readable text, and therefore should be
text/pgp rather than application/pgp. He is planning to fix this.

My premail software generates the application/x-pgp type, which _is_
valid MIME. So is text/x-pgp, which I don't support yet because
premail 0.30 doesn't do clearsigning (hopefully, the next release
will). I am eager to switch to the official MIME type as soon as it is
out.

If anyone knows better, please let me know.

Raph





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