Re: Hashcash-generation/check for IDN-domains

[asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren)]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 17:09:49 +0200, Simon wrote:

> The X-hashcash header sent appeared to contain the non-ASCII
> characters, which I believe is wrong.  So it is the generation that is
> faulty.  Since, if I recall correctly, it copy the content from
> To/From/Cc, it probably should do its own IDN-processing.  I'm not
> sure how that would interfact with answering 'n' at the query you
> refer to though.  Perhaps that query is simply wrong?  It doesn't make
> sense to send mail to non-ASCII domains ever, does it?

That depends on whether the MTA that Gnus talks to understands IDN and
can convert itself, right?

But I guess IDN is meant to be handled at the MUA level, and not by
the MTAs?

If that is correct, I don't know why the user is even asked. Perhaps
the author of that piece of code can explain?

> So Gnus should attempt to translate non-ASCII to xn--* via libidn,
> or refuse to send the message. Then the hashcash code could also
> unconditionally perform idn-encoding. Not sure what should happen if
> idn-encoding inside the hashcash cookie generation fail though. 
> Leave the X-hashcash as-is, with non-ASCII characters? Or remove the
> header?

If the user really shouldn't be asked (above), it's easy (always
idn-encode in hashcash.el).

I think it sounds reasonable that if hashcash.el fails to generate a
payment, the header should not be added?


The checking does seem a little too fragile though, in that spam-split
breaks just because hashcash.el can't understand a Hashcash-header
(i.e. the mail-check-payment should just return false when the header
is not understandable, right? Instead of the error that makes nnmail
think that my fancy-split configuration is invalid).

> When we knew some more answers to these questions, I can try to
> implement them...

Great O:-)


  Best regards,

-- 
 "Mr. Cotton's... parrot. Same question."                     Adam Sjøgren
                                                         asjo@koldfront.dk