Re: Lack of PGP signatures

Mark M. Wrote:
 
> > Is it because most mail programs are not PGP aware?
> 
> I don't know of any mail programs that can use PGP (I know there are various
> interfaces, sendmail wrappers, and other hacks, but I have yet to see a mailer
> with an "Encrypt" or "Sign" option.

Once upon a time last year or the year before, Tim May posted why he 
doesn't use PGP very often.  And I have always stood by that same 
sentiment.  Yes, it is a good encryption product, but it is not 
integrated seamlessly into other applications.  Tim, feel free to 
whack me if you think I'm speaking for you.  If, as cypherpunks, we 
want to spread the use of strong crypto, we need to have a better 
interface than what currently exists on PGP 2.6.2.  

I'm sure Derek and the other guys on PGPlib will make it easier to integrate into 
applications.  Am I just blowing smoke, Mr. Atkins?

PGP is a pain for encrypting or signing e-mail when you have to save 
your message out to a temp file, encrypt it, and load it back in to 
your mail package.

Sure, there are things like Private Idaho, which I use on occasion.  
But, it is still a seperate application that just doesn't fit 
seamlessly into most applications.

In my free time, I have been playing around with add ons for 
Microsoft Exchange.  I've got an OLE 2.0 encryption object that 
embeds nicely into an Exchange message.  I haven't tied it in to PGP 
yet, because I have been waiting for the release of PGPlib.  However, 
that will allow at least some seamless integration.

Brad Shantz
TRIsource Windows Development Services

> I'm sure Derek and the other guys on PGPlib will make it easier to
> integrate into applications.  Am I just blowing smoke, Mr. Atkins?

No, you are not blowing smoke.  That is the hope of the PGPlib
project; PGPlib will make it easy (almost trivial) to integrate PGP
security into almost any application.

> In my free time, I have been playing around with add ons for 
> Microsoft Exchange.  I've got an OLE 2.0 encryption object that 
> embeds nicely into an Exchange message.  I haven't tied it in to PGP 
> yet, because I have been waiting for the release of PGPlib.  However, 
> that will allow at least some seamless integration.

Neat.  I don't know enough about OLE to comment, but can we discuss
this offline?  Is there an equivalent of OLE (AppleEvents, perhaps?)
for the Mac?  It would be really cool if we could come up with a
plug-in standard that gets put into mailers such that we could later
add a PGP drop-in that performs the encryption using those standard
interfaces.

-derek

At 11:09 AM -0400 7/3/96, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Is there an equivalent of OLE (AppleEvents, perhaps?)
> for the Mac?  It would be really cool if we could come up with a
> plug-in standard that gets put into mailers such that we could later
> add a PGP drop-in that performs the encryption using those standard
> interfaces.

Damn betcha. It's called OpenDoc, and it's probably the most exciting thing to happen to the Mac since desktop publishing. <plug> See my web-page for a rant or two on the subject. </plug>

Vinnie Moscaritolo (Famous ex-Marine and Samoan Attorney) started a list at mailto://majordomo@thumper.vmeng.com called mac-crypto (send "subscribe mac-crypto" in the body of the message), where we're talking about stuff like this, and other things. One of the projects we've been kicking around is a Macintosh Digital Commerce Conference ("Digital Commerce *is* Financial Cryptography", and all that...), and it looks like Vinnie's very close to getting a conference date set up.

A while ago, the folks working on the Macintosh Cryptography Interface Project merged their list with mac-crypto, so things have been getting interesting, even if traffic is a little sparse these days.  Getting a conference date firmed up should change that, we hope. So would a discussion of PGPlib in OpenDoc...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"If they could 'just pass a few more laws', 
  we would all be criminals."    --Vinnie Moscaritolo
The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

How can I go about setting up a PGP keyserver on my Web Server?

Joseph Seanor 
cibir@netcom.com