Re: [tlug] Followup on mutt and gpg

[Jonathan Q <jq@example.com>]

On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 11:22:53PM +0900, Ulrich Plate wrote:

>You know, Linux advocacy is a funny thing. Too few years ago, web designers 
>all over the planet were flooded with demands to keep websites downward 
>compatible to Lynx. Now, but when it comes to something much more important 
>like security, all of a sudden everybody refuses to include those with the 
>lesser tools

That's a real apples and oranges thing.  For one, asking people to keep
their pages readable with a text-only browser was, in large part,
a request for standards-compliance.  When frames became a W3C standard,
that became trickier, because lynx does not support frames even now.
Links supports frames, though.  Put another way, it was a request for
developers to not use proprietary Netscape and Microsoft extensions to
HTML that would break compatibility with not only Lynx, but with
one or the other of those, as well.  Many of us remember the
bad old days when "Optimized for Internet Explorer" and "Optimized
for Netscape <put version here>" were very, very common.  If you
didn't view the site with the browser it was "optimized for" (what
they should have said is "We violate W3C standards with the
following set of proprietary extensions") then the site would
not look right, or in extreme cases, not render at all.  Sometimes
by accident, sometimes by design.

Before becoming an admin, I was doing web content, and my take
on the text-mode browser issue was "I will be W3C-compliant, in
my heart, in my thoughts, and in my code.  If you are not 
likewise W3C-compliant and you cannot render my work, whether
it is in your heart, your thoughts, or just your crappy browser,
don't blame me."

On the PGP/MIME issue, I suppose I would say:

"I will be RFC-compliant in my heart, my thoughts, and my
MUA, and if you are not likewise so compliant and you cannot read
my mail, whether it be in your heart, your thoughts, or just your
crappy MUA, don't blame me."

And yes, I can really seize the high ground on this one, because
if Steve Turnbull were on this list, he would, I'm sure, be willing
to tell you how often he kicked my butt for using OE way back when,
and for the non-RFC-compliant crap it spit out.  Steve's righteous
criticism helped speed my migration to using Linux for all my mail.
First Netscape Mail, briefly.  Then Pine for a long while.  I dabbled
in using Xemacs for my mail, but it was just too slow (this was
in 1997 and 1998, RH 4.2 on a K6-166).  Then, in 1999, I achieved
mail enlightenment and have been using Mutt ever since.

>immediately. Alas, I've been using KMail 1.3.2 in Mandrake 8.2 all evening, 
>and neither is a Redmond product...

Mandrake (AKA HWS Linux [1]) tries hard enough, though.  As for Kmail,
well, if it's not RFC-compliant, on what basis would you seek to
defend it? Granted, being non-MS is a good first credential for any
software, but being out of compliance with an RFC that was released
last August (just over a year ago, now) and which was itself an update
of an RFC from October, 1996, strikes me as at least somewhat shoddy.
Maybe Kmail had bigger problems that needed to be solved, or maybe
it's just not a priority for the KDE team right now, who knows?  But
it seems like Kmail (and a number of others, shame on them) are 
well behind the times.

While I am not a KDE user, I believe they have an overall fine
product.  However, Kmail does need some work.


>and others. If you prefer GPGMail to always use the OpenPGP/MIME format, then 
>quit Mail, launch Terminal, type defaults write.com.apple.mail 
>GPGOpenPGPStyleOnly YES and restart Mail."
>
>Something like this would be nice, no?

Frankly, no.  The time-honored rule of thumb in MTA circles is
"Be conservative in what you produce, but liberal in what you accept."
That is, do your very best to make sure that what you send out
is fully RFC-compliant and doesn't make anybody cuss about your
stupid broken MTA.  And on the other hand, do your best to
accept all the mail you can, even if it comes from somebody's
stupid, broken MTA.   If it's just so borked your MTA can't
grok it, then send it back.

I think this can apply for MUAs as well.  I will make an honest
effort to use a MUA that sends out RFC-compliant mail, and I
hope that it can also accept as much broken crap from non-RFC-
compliant MUAs as possible.  However, even if it can send
broken crap on command, I'm not going to allow it do so just
because your MUA can't understand things that are done
correctly.

You'll have to pardon me, now.  The BOFH phone is ringin',
sounds like a long distance call :-)

Jonathan
-- 
GPG key: DF12B4EF (5399 C834 3ABB C3AF 610C  5345 D5D6 E6EA DF12 B4EF)
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys  DF12B4EF

[1] Hood-Welded-Shut Linux

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