Re: gpg again...

[Albrecht Dreß <albrecht dress arcor de>]

Am 25.01.04 22:07 schrieb(en) Andreas Schmidt:
> Usually, when a message is signed, there is this colored lock-icon next  
> to it in the header list. However, apparently there are some messages  
> where balsa tries to look up a key but does not display the icon.
> 
> What seems to make the difference is the content-type of the message:  
> the icon is shown for Content-Type: multipart/signed and not shown for  
> Content-Type: text/plain.

Well, there are two different types of pgp signed messages: rfc2440 (aka  
OpenPGP) "signs" the text buffer of a text/plain (or whatever the mime  
type is) directly, whereas rfc3156 creates a multipart/signed message  
"container" with a detached signature in an extra part. Try to view the  
source of such messages to see the different methods. The difference for  
balsa is that checking the *main* (top level) content type of a message is  
"cheap", whereas looking into the messages body may be expensive (think of  
imap). Therefore, the padlock is only shown for multipart/signed and  
multipart/encrypted messages. Again, please have a look at my web page  
about this topic:

	http://home.arcor.de/dralbrecht.dress/balsa/UsingGnuPG.html

> As Balsa already recognizes that the plain text message is signed (it  
> looks for a key), wouldn't it be possible to show the icon for these  
> messages as well?

Oh, you think we should change the icon to a padlock if we find a rfc 2440  
signed/encrypted message (or an embedded signed/encrypted message)? That's  
a good point, I'll think about that!

Thanks for pointing me to that,

cheers,

	Albrecht.

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