[Mew-dist 05824] Re: pgp5, gpg, kong, etc.

[sen_ml at example.com]

At around Sat, 01 Aug 1998 00:27:37 +0900,
 Kazu Yamamoto (山本和彦) <kazu at example.com> may have mentioned:

> From: sen_ml at example.com
> Subject: [Mew-dist 05740] pgp5, gpg, kong, etc. 
> Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 13:37:03 +0900
> 
> > are you considering adding support (or hooks) for things like gnu pg,
> > crypto kong, etc.?  for that matter, what about an independent emacs
> > crypto package?
> 
> Pls tell me why you think Mew should have interfaces to them. I have
> not used them, so I don't advantages.

i think cryptographic functionality in a separate elisp package might
be a good thing (tm) -- it's not just mail and news which pgp (et. al)
is used for.  i haven't used 'mailcrypt', but it seems like a good
idea (though AFAIK, it only supports pgp).

in a way, it isn't so much that i think mew should have an interface to
a lot of different encryption/decryption packages -- it's more that,
i think there should be one interface which can be used to talk to
a number of different packages.  if mew could communicate via this
interface, then mew doesn't need to contain code for each separate
encryption package.

of the two packages i mentioned, the one which i think is worth
considering for sure is gnu pg.  more information is available at:

  http://www.d.shuttle.de/isil/crypt/gnupg.html

a short blurb from the page:

  GNUPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP. Because it does
  not use IDEA or RSA it can be used without any restrictions. GNUPG is
  nearly in compliance with the OpenPGP draft.

information on crypto kong is available at:

  http://www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong/Kong.htm 

it's purely a windows-based thing at this point, so i don't see too much
merit in working on this particular package (meant mostly as an example).

> > allowing the user to specify or letting the user keep profiles for
> > messages received from certain addresses (or other criteria) might offer
> > reasonable alternatives.  i would favor the former as the latter might
> > introduce complications...
> 
> If you wish, I will provide hooks to make the former possible. Your
> example implementation would be appreciated.

cool!  i will start considering designs.

> In general, you can't protect your privacy on multi-user machines. You
> should use a single-user machine without remote accesses.

i think it's a question of degrees.

i think it depends on what one considers 'privacy' -- even single-user
machines w/o remote access more often than not emit enough
electromagnetic radiation which can be collected to reproduce what is
displayed on the screen...

but this is getting off topic -- sorry to drag this out.

> > i can see that letting the user configure this is a good idea.
> 
> You can do it. Set mew-temp-file-initial.

excellent!  thank you for the tip!

> > i'd like to work on code for this -- i'm much more comfortable w/ perl
> > and i'd like to use the resulting code in other contexts...do you think
> > that there is a place in IM for code of this nature?
> 
> The contact point is img at example.com

thanks -- is this a mailing list?

> > p.s. if someone has some pointers about where i can look to learn about
> > process-related functions in elisp, i would really appreciate it.  C-h-f
> > and M-x apropos offer little help in this case (or so i have found).
> 
> Use info of elisp which is available from ftp.gnu.org.

thank you.  this is the elisp reference manual right?

thank you again for your detailed responses.

-sen