[ietf-dkim] draft-ietf-dkim-base-08 submitted

Mon Jan 22 07:49:49 PST 2007

> The revised wording achieves what it was intended to achieve,
> namely that  an empty/absent <body> result in a single <CRLF> to be
> hashed.
>
> What is not clear is WHY this alternative was chosen (as opposed to
> letting it result in an empty <body>).

I could easily envision a situation where a completely empty body got 
sent via BDAT to an intermediate MTA that had to convert it to DATA 
format for retransmission.  It wasn't hard to make a guess that some 
such MTAs might a CRLF before the final dot.  It's not likely, but 
possible, and canonicalizing in this way prevents that problem.

Other than that it's an arbitrary choice.  It was always my intent 
that it be included, and the ABNF was clear that it should be 
included, so that seemed to be the right way to go.

eric