Re: [Nmh-workers] nmh architecture discussion: format engine character set

[Earl Hood]

On 8/11/2015 12:08 PM, Anthony J. Bentley wrote:

> Not to take things too far off-topic, but in my wild imaginings I've
> wondered how practical it would be to implement a mail client that
> used a mh mail store as a base to expose a filesystem (maybe over FUSE
> or 9P) that contains individual messages as decoded UTF-8 text files,
> and sub-hierarchies as necessary for attachments/MIME, however that
> would work.

This poses a problem when dealing with digital signatures.

Unless nmh supports signature validation at first reception, any
modifications to the data will likely invalidate any signatures.

The problem is compounded when you have multiple signature systems: PGP,
S/MIME, and even DKIM (signatures on header data).

I guess you could store the original and the decoded-normalized versions
of the message, with the latter used for day-to-day operations, and the
former for any signature operations or regenerating the normalized
version.

--ewh