making it easy to find keys

[Anthony E. Greene]

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On 03-Dec-2003/16:55 -0800, Atom 'Smasher' <atom-gpg at suspicious.org> wrote:
>aside from key-servers, i've noticed that quite a few people have their
>keys available from their own web site and commonly referenced by a link
>on a web site, email signature, or email headers.
>
>in the absence of standards (that i'm aware of) i'm wondering if there's
>any consensus, or at least any good reasons for or against, presenting the
>public key information in particular formats....

I use the following email headers:

  X-OpenPGP-KeyID: 
  X-OpenPGP-Fingerprint: 
  X-OpenPGP-URL: 

I think that's more informative and consistent that just using
X-Request-PGP.

>assuming that a public key is armored, should the file suffix be ".txt" or
>".asc"? i've seen both used, and i think i've seen a few people use a
>".pgp" or ".gpg" suffix.

I would use an ASCII armored file with ".asc" or ".txt". I tend to avoid
binary file formats for data exchange if a text file is just as
functional.

>should the file name be pgp? gpg? pgp-key? gpg-key? open-pgp-key? i can't
>even count how many different file-names i've seen people use.

I suggest using the KeyID of the key itself (ie; 0x6C94239D.asc), or if
you really want to make it clear exactly what's in the file:
"OpenPGP-Key-0x6C94239D.asc". Using the keyID also dramatically reduces
the chances of filename collision. The 8.3 days are long gone. We may as
well take advantage of modern file systems and use informative file names.


Tony
- -- 
Anthony E. Greene <mailto:Anthony%20E.%20Greene%20%3Cagreene at pobox.com%3E>
OpenPGP Key: 0x6C94239D/7B3D BD7D 7D91 1B44 BA26  C484 A42A 60DD 6C94 239D
AOL/Yahoo Messenger: TonyG05    HomePage: <http://www.pobox.com/~agreene/>
Linux. The choice of a GNU generation <http://www.linux.org/>

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