[openpgp] Re: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-gall agher-openpgp-media-types-00.txt

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> Wed, 05 Nov 2025 17:14:54 +0100
Newsgroups	gmane.ietf.openpgp
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Hi.  I think this document is a great initiative -- media types for many
old protocols and applications are often under-specified, and PGP isn't
any exception.  I'm happy to review the document.

Re section 5 that introduces new media type parameters, is this
documenting any existing deployment, or is this a purely new idea [that
is open for discussion]?

What do you think about not doing parametrization but instead define two
separate self-contained media types for each format?  For example:

application/pgp-secret-keys
application/pgp-secret-keys-unarmored

or even

text/pgp-secret-keys
application/pgp-secret-keys

although text/* is often complicated due to i18n concerns, and I suppose
we use application/pgp-* for armored PGP blobs already so this would be
a strange pattern.

Compare with:

application/pgp-secret-keys; armored=false
application/pgp-secret-keys; armored=true

which leads to the default value complexity.

My experience with parametrized media types is that it creates
implementation complexity and I've rarely seen this paramtrization
contribute to anything over having two separate media types for each
specific format.

I may be missing some context here, maybe using a parameter is the only
feasible approach because of some concern that I'm not seeing.

/Simon

Andrew Gallagher <[email protected]> writes:

> Hi, all.
>
> I have uploaded a new draft (mainly so that I can reference it from
> draft-hkp!) specifying some updates to the current OpenPGP entries in
> the Media Types registry. In particular, this draft defines:
>
> * new media types `application/pgp-secret-keys` and `application/pgp-message`
> * a media type parameter `armor`, with value `true` or `false`, to
> indicate the use or lack of ASCII armor
>
> Together I believe these cover all the missing types of OpenPGP data
> in common use. Comments welcome!
>
> Thanks,
> A
>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>> 
>> From: [email protected]
>> Subject: New Version Notification for
>> draft-gallagher-openpgp-media-types-00.txt
>> Date: 8 August 2025 at 18:25:03 IST
>> To: "Andrew Gallagher" <[email protected]>
>> 
>> A new version of Internet-Draft draft-gallagher-openpgp-media-types-00.txt has
>> been successfully submitted by Andrew Gallagher and posted to the
>> IETF repository.
>> 
>> Name:     draft-gallagher-openpgp-media-types
>> Revision: 00
>> Title:    Media Types for OpenPGP
>> Date:     2025-08-08
>> Group:    Individual Submission
>> Pages:    12
>> URL:
>> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-gallagher-openpgp-media-types-00.txt
>> Status:
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gallagher-openpgp-media-types/
>> HTMLized:
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-gallagher-openpgp-media-types
>> 
>> 
>> Abstract:
>> 
>>   This document updates the specification of existing media types, and
>>   specifies additional media types, for the identification of OpenPGP
>>   data in non-MIME contexts.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The IETF Secretariat
>> 
>> 
>
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