Re: [openpgp] Character encodings

This would be a huge step backward. The proportion of text on the internet
that is UTF-8 is monotonically increasing toward 100%. Thank goodness.
On Mar 18, 2015 4:38 AM, "Wyllys Ingersoll" <wyllys@gmail.com> wrote:

> One area that I think needs some attention is the character encoding and
> charsets for encrypted text messages.
>
> 4880 says that everything should be UTF-8.  However, the reality is that
> UTF8 is not used everywhere and there are lots of clients that compose
> messages in their native preferred character set (Latin5, Greek, Kanji,
> etc) and its very difficult as an implementor to figure it out after the
> fact without some indication from the sender.
>
> The literal packet format only specifies 3 possible values - binary, UTF8,
> or plain.  The ASCII Armor header may specify a different charset (though
> unfortunately very few agents add the "Charset" PGP header).
> Additionally, if the message had MIME headers, there may be yet another
> charset indicated in MIME that differs from the ASCII Armor charset and the
> literal packet data format byte.
>
> If the encrypting PGP software knows what character encoding was used to
> compose the original message, there should be some way to communicate this
> in the message that would be definitive so that the decrypting software can
> present it the way it was originally intended.  As an implementor, this is
> one of the trickiest areas to get right so that the end user sees the
> messages as it was originally intended.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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