[ietf-dkim] Escaping things in key/ADSP records

[Steve Atkins]

On Aug 3, 2009, at 9:13 AM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ietf-dkim-bounces at mipassoc.org [mailto:ietf-dkim-
>> bounces at mipassoc.org] On Behalf Of Steve Atkins
>> Sent: Sunday, August 02, 2009 6:34 PM
>> To: DKIM WG
>> Subject: Re: [ietf-dkim] Escaping things in key/ADSP records
>>
>> [...]
>
> Nice work!  However:
>
>> If anyone has good (or known bad) records that it gets wrong I'm
>> interested to hear about it.
>
> It reports the contents of medusa3._domainkey.blackops.org as  
> invalid which is not correct.  That record contains an "r=" and an  
> "rs=" tag, both of which are defined by active I-Ds.  Those tags may  
> be unknown to RFC4871, but that specification says such should  
> merely be ignored; they don't render the record invalid.

For typical DKIM users though, commenting on an invalid field as "This  
is probably invalid, but there might be an experimental I-D that's  
using it, so maybe it's OK and receivers may or may not ignore it" is  
going to be far more confusing than "This is wrong, fix it." - as if  
they're using "r=" it's probably a typo or a misunderstanding, rather  
than intentional use of an experimental field.

You're intentionally using non-standard or experimental fields - so  
you know better than the mechanical validator, and that's OK.

(If we were to add a form on dkim.org that points to the checker, that  
might be the place to discuss what it considers valid and what it  
doesn't.)

It might be interesting to have an alternate checker that tracks the  
additional fields being discussed in active I-Ds too, though. Is there  
a registry of experimental fields or list of I-Ds anywhere?

Cheers,
   Steve