scope of standard authority

[Hauke Laging]

Am Mi 11.07.2012, 11:13:46 schrieb Robert J. Hansen:

> The entire point of a standard is to allow interoperation.  That means
> there has to be some final fallback mode.

IMHO the second sentence effectively rewrites the first to:

"The entire point of a standard is to ENFORCE interoperation."

I don't see the benefit of forcing someone to something in a security context 
if the direction is not to more but to less security. The two cases are:

a) I try to send an email or sign a file. This fails with the hint that I have 
to correct my configuration. I then can decide whether to do that or not.

b) I believe to make signatures of type X or Y only. But in rare cases such a 
"standard feature" (which maybe not more than a tiny share of the users know 
about) makes me unawarely create one of type Z.

Who would choose (b) for himself and how big would the damage of getting there 
via (a) be for those?

It seems to me that --digest-algo does have its use case and that the 
documentation is wrong:

--digest-algo name
[...] --personal-digest-preferences is the safe way to accomplish the same
thing.

It's obviously not the same.


Hauke
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