Re: [PATCH] signature-format.txt: Note SSH and X.509 signature delimiters

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 20, 2022, 19:49 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqzgnqgpbw.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq7daui4s8.fsf@gitster.g>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

>> +Signatures always begin and end with a delimiter, which differs
>
> The term "signature delimiter" is understandable, but is that the
> term used by the users and the developers of OpenPGP, X.509 and SSH
> who know and use such an ascii-armored signatures?  Just making sure
> we do not accidentally "invent" a new word that the upstream/wider
> community has an established word for.
>
> 	... Goes and looks ...
> 	https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4880.html#section-7
> 	seems to use "Armor Header and Armor Tail Lines" to refer to
> 	the BEGIN and the END delimiter lines, respectively.

Please do not take this as my recommendation to blindly adopt "Armor Header" etc. It was merely an illustration of what level of due diligence is expected behind a change in this project. If you make a similar study of nomenclature used by X.509 and SSH folks, you may discover that there is no agreed-upon standard term common across these three, in which case "signature delimiter" might be the best "vendor neutral" word to use in our documentation. Or it may turn out that RFC4880 is the oddball and the other two use the same words to refer to their header and tail lines, in which case, unless those common words are too technical and hard to understand for readers, we may want to use that common one.

Thanks.