PGP MIME type (was Well now that we're signing...)

[Raph Levien]

Brad Huntting writes:

> For all of you out there who are using MIME headers:  There is now
> an official mime type for PGP (and an RFC to accompany it).  Please
> dont post messages with type "text/x-pgp" or other rot anymore.

Where? Which RFC?

I just checked the IANA media-types directory (at
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types), and there
was no PGP type listed. I also searched through recent RFC titles, and
found nothing appropriate.

There is of course a draft by Nat Borenstein et al, but it is not an
official RFC yet. Therefore, it is not valid MIME. Last I heard, it
was taking a fairly low priority. The draft doesn't address the fact
that a clearsigned message is readable text, and therefore should be
text/pgp rather than application/pgp. He is planning to fix this.

My premail software generates the application/x-pgp type, which _is_
valid MIME. So is text/x-pgp, which I don't support yet because
premail 0.30 doesn't do clearsigning (hopefully, the next release
will). I am eager to switch to the official MIME type as soon as it is
out.

If anyone knows better, please let me know.

Raph