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Re: [openpgp] Character encodings

Jon Callas <jon@callas.org> Tue, 17 March 2015 19:45 UTC

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From: Jon Callas <jon@callas.org>
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Subject: Re: [openpgp] Character encodings
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One of the things that OpenPGP doesn't do very well that needs to be fixed is layering.

We have the notion of text versus binary because at one time that kinda made sense. Back when FTP was high-tech, you could get better usability by knowing that something was text so that you could translate between SIXBIT, EBCDIC, RAD50, ASCII, and other codings that only used upper case in their names (because lower-case was also high-tech in those days).

We don't have those problems any more. We have slightly different problems, but we also have solutions to those. If you want to send a text message that has a strange encoding, there are ways to do that. Wyllys Ingersoll and others have noted this.

Just get rid of the notion of text. Make it be all binary. Push the problem up a layer in the software stack -- they have to deal with it anyway, and all OpenPGP can do is make it worse.

	Jon

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