Re: Outstanding question - rule on cleartext signing last line

[Ian G <[e-mail]>]

David Shaw wrote:
> I don't think it is reasonable to expect interchange here.

I'm also of that view, mildly.  The purpose of
cleartext signing is so that we can pass around
signed documents and have them survive as such,
with a human-reachable import.

In my time using this feature with contracts, I
have never come across a case where interchange
/ reversibility is needed.  In fact, to me, it
is a nuisance that verification of the signature
causes a stripped file to be produced.

I'm scratching my head here and I can't quite see
it.  Can anyone?

> p.s. Incidentally, speaking of clear signed data, there are
> differences in practice in what trailing whitespace is removed.  Some
> programs remove space and tab.  Some programs remove only space.
> Currently, a trailing tab in a clearsigned document is an effective
> way to break interoperability.

Right.  Also there is UTF.  That's why we banged the
drum a while ago and got this inserted:

     Also, any trailing whitespace -- spaces (0x20) and tabs (0x09) -- at
     the end of any line is removed when the cleartext signature is
     generated.

The characters to be removed are specified precisely.
If something is not removing tabs, then that's a bug.
A victory against high stress levels in developers.

iang