Microsoft's Evil Plan (was Re: GPG

[L. Adrian Griffis]

On Sat, 7 Sep 2002, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> Adrian, as has been pointed out here, Outlook is not the only software that
> has trouble with the GPG mime format.  That kind of lets the air out of your
> rant, but what you say is true more as a general effect than a specific
> conspiracy.
>
> [remainder removed because it is largely correct and doesn't need
> to be rediscussed]

It is true more often than I would like to admit that there is plenty
of room to let air out of my rants, I don't recall seeing any examples
of MUA's that server as evidence against my latest rant.  It should be
noted that my rant is not specifically limited to Outlook.  It was
about resisting MicroSoft's efforts to give all non-MS software an
artificially bad name.

To serve as a useful counter-example to my rant, an MUA would have to
have to conform to commonly accepted RFC's (outside of MS) but still
have trouble dealing with the emails in question.  Even a non-MS MUA
that departs from handling RFC compliant messages properly so that it
could handle MS created messages better would not qualify.  Does that
make sense??

It is much more important to make the discussion fair and useful than
to maintain the credibility of my rants, so I am quite willing to
concede a point against my rant if the point makes sense.  But, can you
see why I claim that a proper counter-example must be RFC compliant and
not simply something other than Outlook?

Also, it is worth clarifying a point:  It's not actually GPG's mime
format, if I understand correctly.  Various email clients have
plug-ins and such for automatic the process of handling GPG encryption,
decryption, and signatures.  It's the email clients that do the mime
encoding, although GPG can provide data that is encapsulated in mime
attachments.  I should have pointed this out in my original rant, and
I am pointing out now that this is not a flaw specific to your reply.

Adrian