Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-secsh-publickeyfile-08.txt

[pgut001%cs.auckland.ac.nz@localhost (Peter Gutmann)]

der Mouse <mouse%Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA@localhost> squeeked:

>(1) I point out to you the language about line termination characters,
>which is unimplementable nonsense on OSes that don't use line
>termination characters to delimit lines; 

Which OSes can't handle flat text files?  Yes, I know it's possible with a bit
of effort to dig up some OS relic that has record-format files *alongside text
files*, but the only OS I can think of right now that *only* has record-format 
files is CICS, and since AFAIK cryptlib is the only SSH implementation than 
runs on CICS and I don't care how it stores its files, this isn't an issue.  
Thus my comment that your objection is ridiculously pedantic - I can claim (for 
example) that QNX version 2 and earlier use record separators instead of CR or 
LF and that the spec is therefore completely unworkable for people running QNX 
on their PC AT, but in practice I think if anyone's still using that they'll 
be able to cope.  The text as is (that is, saying that you need to be able to 
handle CR and/or LF terminators) is just fine, and as a vast number of other 
IETF specs that work with flat text have shown is perfectly workable and 
adequate.  This is starting to sound like those X3J11 arguments about needing 
trigraphs...

Peter.