Meaning of "sig! N" self-signature

[David Shaw]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 05:31:51PM +0100, Sven Radde wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> David Shaw schrieb:
> > A notation allows the issuer of
> > the signature to add special instructions or general information to be
> > seen by whoever verifies the signature.
> 
> Are there any conventions/suggestions for these notations? I mean,
> something like "signer-key-url=http://..." or the like? Or is it fully
> arbitrary?

The rule, according to RFC-4880 is that the notation name is in the
form of an email address: your-notation-name at your-domain.example.com
or the like.  This prevents collisions among different people (since
their domain is in the notation name).

There is a process in which a given notation can be made an internet
standard, and thus not need the '@' sign, but there are no such
standard notations yet.

David