Subject: Re: sig. subpacket & length conflicts?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 09:10:09 -0700

> to all: what's the verdict?

The "verdict" is that there is a limit of 65535 on the length of each
of the hashed and unhashed segments.  That's what the spec says, that's
what you do.  Obviously this implies that each individual subpacket has
to be no larger than this.  You can express the subpacket length using any
of the permitted encoding methods.  There is no ambiguity that I can see.

The only "issue" was whether we might want to make a new signature version
in the future to hold larger subpackets, but the consensus seemed to be
that this would be a misuse of signature subpackets; such large amounts
of data should not be hidden within sigs, but should be expressed on
their own somewhere.

Hal

---

From: Erron Criddle <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 09:46:45 +0800

Hal,

>of data should not be hidden within sigs, but should be expressed on

Maybe in a version 5 sig., simply make the signature subpacket length 
definition packet equal to a two octet scalar - this would then marry with 
the total length of all un/hashed subpackets and would also reduce the 
amount of processing required to determine the length of a signature subpacket.

Regards

Erron Criddle
Comasp Ltd.
Level 2, 45 Stirling Hwy
NEDLANDS  WA  6009

Fax: 08 9386 9473
Tel: 08 9386 9534

http://www.comasp.com
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:26:37 +0900

thanks for the response.

From: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: sig. subpacket & length conflicts?
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 09:10:09 -0700
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

> of the permitted encoding methods.  There is no ambiguity that I can see.

from a clarity perspective, i think it would be helpful to make a note
in section 5.2.3.1 saying something like: "but note the length
restriction imposed by the two octet scalar length specified in
section 5.2.3".  something like this text could appear directly after
the following text:

   Each subpacket consists of a subpacket header and a body.  The
   header consists of:

     - the subpacket length (1,  2, or 5 octets)

     - the subpacket type (1 octet)

   and is followed by the subpacket specific data.

[ since Erron has asked about it, it seems to me that it isn't
necessarily obvious in the absolute (if there is such a thing).  i
agree that it is obvious if you know which details to focus on when
you are thinking about the matter. ]

> of data should not be hidden within sigs, but should be expressed on

thanks for the clarification.