Mica, While your comments are whimsical and, in some case very true, the point is HTML mail is here to stay. You or I will not stop it. I think the point of this thread was simply to state that point. This being accepted, what can be done to ensure GPG, PGP, etc., can all work under it's construct? We are not going to solve the worlds (or the internets) problems with GPG not supporting the HTML email format. The bottom line is CAN GPG and others be made to play nicely with HTML.
All our rants about the evil perpetrated on this world by HTML email is not going to make it go away. Heck, Beta was a better format then VHS, but we all know the outcome of that one. Either GPG and the likes begin to work with HTML OR someone needs to step up and prevent those applications from trying to apply digital signatures and encryption on emails formatted in HTML. Personally, I use HTML email in my daily work to embed images that make the flow of my emails work better. I'd love to be able to digitally sign and/or encrypt my emails without the intervention of Outlook (S/MIME) and use something generally more accepted (GPG, PGP). But, if it just won't work OR the complexities of making it work aren't feasible, then I will revert to TXT and then sign. Either way, the GPG community just needs to take a stand one way or the other. Make it work or make it not work... Cary -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mica Mijatovic Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 10:21 To: Nicholas Cole Subject: Re: RFCs, standards, pink bunnies and flower patterns -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Was Tue, 17 Oct 2006, at 15:34:39 +0100 (BST), when Nicholas wrote: >> Of course that it doesn't mean that HTML should be banished >> completely from the 'lectronic mail world, but it has its essential >> limitations as for the cryptographic routines. > Mica, > Thank you for your email. It made me reflect. I had been ignoring this > discussion. HTML emails are here to stay, and may users of the > internet rely on them. Indeed, text only emails can look horrid on > many Outlook setups, a fact I was long unaware of since I haven't used > it in about 7 years. > It's hard enough getting people to use encrypted email as it is - > telling them they can't use what is to many people a very standard > tool doesn't seem to me a good way forward. > It seemed to me that PGP/MIME provides an excellent way to handle HTML > email. But your email did make me think about that a bit more. > Obviously, its ability to load external images might make the > signature in practice meaningless (though the signature on the source > code would still be correct, which makes it an interesting > philosophical point). Is there anything else about an HTML email that > raises a red flag from a security point of view? I recall now a movie with Eddie Murphy playing a somewhat irregular priest explaining to the crowd what is evil and what is not. Whatever he says, now this and then that, the crowd says "Yeah!" So, it is basically a matter of anthropology (and sometimes more specifically of neurology, when the psychedel[ir]ic kitsch element is particularly stressed in an HTML...creation)[1]. But if we put aside the matters of aesthetics (which is not just "a matter of taste" but indeed of the work of subtle health of undamaged neurones as well, which is an objective category), we can see that we have at disposal two main aspects we can observe and analyze the HTML case in the context (and it is a model for all the other ones of the same and similar type)... 1) technical characteristics of such a document 2) the ways subjects _react_ on it, the document ...where the first aspect tells us about the essential proprieties (what it is, does, can etc.) and the other one describes _habits_, as a conditional behavior conditioned by various and idio...matic ways some particular group of a given population adopts its models of behavior.[2] Now, these models of _behavior_ can exist entirely independently of the real value of the objects/things (in this case HTML mail), and if these models we take to be criterions for estimation of the real value, then we get the known mess where just mere habits are taken to be a standards. It is an evasive finer distinction that seems rarely who is able to perceive and to keep attention on it enough long to get a clear thought of it. Since it is a global/general phenomenon, it encompasses the (human) mental activities involved in creating something as the RFCs are as well. This is generally result of the taking _habits_ to be criterion of standards, and not the technical facts of the phenomenon that is object of these habits. RFCs are anyway good, generally speaking, since they have a basic intention (to try if nothing else) to introduce an order and thus to prevent an incredible mess, which would result in ultimate dysfunctionality. It means thus that they, RFCs, are not gods nor priests, and that they should be taken "with a grain of salt", not for granted thus, with a healthy reason and not by "common sense".[3] We have thus to think (to a certain needed degree) as well, not just to merely react, and everything becomes better then, we get much better solutions, and better solutions bring more enjoyment. When the organ of pleasure disciplines itself, it produces and gives much more pleasure. *** Generally, HTMLanguage is for instance a pretty powerful language, it is not naive at all, and with it many actions can be performed and triggered, everywhere on your hard disk and "peripherals". These codes you can't see/perceive on the surface, since they are not rendered by a browser/mailer's HTML reader, although they are performed anyway. Not good for a mail, definitely. "It's evil." (-: For now. As for the "horrid look of text only mail", Courier is not only fixed width font. I myself like it since it resembles the old typewriters which is quite fine to me. Of others Lucida Console comes to mind, for Windows, and many other ones for Linux. _____________________ [1] But again, might be that those people simply have not enough for a better weed or simply a hammer/mazzuola, so is not nice to laugh at someone's poverty. We also shouldn't forget that Oscar Wild gave his life fighting against kitschy wallpapers. His last words were: "Or they or me". [2] See Pavlovian reflexes, how they are created and function. [3] What is "common sense" in mental hospital for instance, or in some collective insanity, or in an insanity in two... A "common" is not enough to make a "standard". It resembles, it resembles it, indeed, but it is not enough. - -- Mica ~~~ For personal mail please use my address as it is *exactly* given in my "From" field, otherwise it will not reach me. ~~~ GPG keys/docs/software at: http://blueness.port5.com/pgpkeys/ http://tronogi.tripod.com/pgp/pgpkeys/ "One tartar beef steak, please" - Nietzsche -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6-svn-4217 <>o<> tiger192 i686 * (Cygwin/MinGW32) iQEVAwUBRTUQ9bSpHvHEUtv8AQjVLAgArVE3eREsxRsLGKPDyKOkrFxq/BNeeANQ F/jyu7CTnYCp+cpVpLtZ2wAftYdhGch3X8yOLvE+39xKtM/9pNwe4eY+7UXlDxJD exOwyGAWp2qlXoCyQ2gfks9QUU6KfW1H/OhTTj8e5WpQi38oDIrXs3BMPM7ZMeRa +yh0PAX5Efgppw8q9x5XrNJJ0iUWhgHu3IrYbvoby8P7HZWYdC8ACraRs87wU1Uy duqB4oYMRB+oqHp6JBFtiHdfJbygcrIY8JUE9hJYb0/kHAeUenyTGFT/2wZX9/Ce p3E7QCZTJ+V1DT9v/8TInnxZ3GgDPZM8RtzPng4BzMaTRmmXge/U8w== =ju9G -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
