GPG

[Jason Clinton]

bkelsay at comcast.net wrote:

>Hey I don't want to make a scene or anything, but is there a reason that all
>emails from you come as attachments?   A lot of us here never open
>attachments from unknown sources.  We have had viruses on this list like
>everywhere else so we are a little gun shy.  I know this is a Linux list,
>but a lot of guys still have to use Winders at work or like me use it at
>home.  My crappy desktop machine w/ Winders 98 just does email and browsing.
>
>Anyway, the main question is why are your emails coming as attachments?
>
>Brian Kelsay
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jason Clinton" <clintonj at umkc.edu>
>To: "Duston, Hal" <hdusto01 at sprintspectrum.com>
>Cc: "'Kclug'" <kclug at kclug.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 2:48 PM
>Subject: Re: Meeting reminder
>

Ok, this is the fourth person to ask so here's the explination once and 
for all:

----snip again----
Brian Densmore wrote:

> Jason,
>  What is it you attach to your emails? Every time I try to open one my
> harddrive starts spinning!
> I don't mean to be a picky or anything, 
> but I really don't like having to wait thirty seconds or more to open an
> email.
>
> Brian
>
>  
>
Each attachment on my email is a GPG/PGP/MIME signature. It's because 
you're using a Microsoft Exchange client that you're having problems. 
Had MS written their clients to be RFC compliant there wouldn't be a 
problem. Outlook users get the churning effect while Outlook Express 
users see the body of the message as an attachment. Here's an Email I 
recently sent on the subject to someone else with the same problem.

---snip----
Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

>> Humm... interesting. In theory, modern mail readers should be only
>> displaying the text sections and displaying the signature as an
>> attachment. Mozilla Mail, Mutt, Evolution and KMail support PGP/Mine, I
>> believe.
>>
>
> Remember that not everyone has a "modern mail reader", some of use 
> Pine.  If
> you look at my headers, you'll see Outlook Express, it's what I have so I
> use it.

Actually, Pine does display the text body correctly because it was 
written to be RFC compliant. The PGP/Mine standard is actually just an 
augmentation of the MIME RFC and an RFC unto itself. (RFC 2440 and 
3156). Microsoft Outlook and especially Outlook Express, on the other 
hand, do not properly parse message content and so the result is the 
text attachment you see.

> When sending to a mailing list, you have to assume a very low common
> denominator, both because of the breadth of the readership and because of
> the possible processing layers on the network.

The body of the message is just plain old text.

> I would like to see heavier processing on the list - HTML and MIME
> stripping, plain text presentation.  I know it's possible because it's 
> done
> for the archive conversion.  Until we get that, we'll have to do it
> manually.  Plain text only to the list.

Digital signature are extremely important and it's really quite appaling 
that they're not more utilized. For archive and posterities sake 
especially, it's important that the PGP signature and the entire body of 
the message go on record unaltered. ... I suppose I could switch to 
inline PGP signing, but that would just be extremely annoy to those with 
user agents that actually comply to the RFC.
---snip---
----snip again----