[ietf-dkim] SSP - should we drop the cryptic o=. syntax for something a little more readable?

[Eric Allman]

> Oh goody, I get to be a contrarian!
>
> -1

Mike, I would have been severely disappointed if you weren't a 
contrarian.

> For two reasons:
>
> 1) With my developers hat on, I couldn't really care the least:
>     if you have to look them up, you probably need to look up the
>     other single character tags too. This is just a matter of being
>     familiar with the spec, and h, z, b, m etc are all equally
>     opaque IMO.

Good point, but I still find (most of) the letters to be more 
mnemonic than characters such as "-", "~", and "!", all of which mean 
"not" to me.

> 2) I'm guessing that we will utterly fail to have a single word that
>     describes the rich semeantics of the policy attached to whatever
>     symbol we choose. Witness this latest brouhaha with "exclusive"
>     which is not even part of the current draft. An abstract symbol
>     which has no baggage of its own and is, in fact, just a pointer
>     to the normative text seems like a better way to avoid
>     misinterpretation.

I have to admit that this is a good point.

eric