Re: EasyPG API and usage questions

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:31:17 +0900 Daiki Ueno <address@hidden> wrote: 

>>>>>> In <address@hidden> 
>>>>>> Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> wrote:
DU> What feature do you want in addition to this?

>> Just the choice of cipher, and a way to limit the epa-file-enable effect
>> to the insert only (pending discussion above).

DU> I think that it would not be too late to implement these features until
DU> someone else really wants them.  The former is not even provided by
DU> GPGME, GPA, etc.,

I don't think that just because a feature has not been done means it's
not useful.  I gave specific examples: I'd like to encrypt a Maildir
spool, and don't want to burn the CPU cycles necessary to use the
default cipher on it.  On the other hand, I want a good cipher (better
than the default if possible) applied to my passwords file.  If you
think those examples are only useful to me, I'll set up my own functions
to do it.  I think other users would like that kind of flexibility.

>> I think specifying symmetric encryption at the epa-file level would be
>> nice too.

DU> No, epa-file already supports this.  You have never used epa-file,
DU> have you?  It interactively asks you which encryption to use.

Here's what I did (before asking you those questions) from an Emacs CVS
checkout (epa-mode is t, and I also ran epa-file-enable):

C-x C-f file-with-content
C-x C-w /tmp/c.gpg
Use untrusted key? n
[aborted]

C-x C-f file-with-content
C-x C-w /tmp/c.gpg
Use untrusted key? y
.../tmp/c.gpg written and in current buffer...
M-x kill-buffer
C-x C-f /tmp/c.gpg
"File exists, but cannot be read"

At this point I was in the /tmp/c.gpg buffer, it was read-only, but had
no content.

Here I assumed I need to set up GPG keys (I have none) and gave up.  I
looked at epa.texi and didn't see a solution.  I also tried M-x
epa-encrypt-file instead of the C-x C-w direct write, and got the same
results.  I was never asked about symmetric encryption AFAIK.  Is the
"untrusted key" question about symmetric encryption?

If I missed a way to do symmetric encryption in the above, please let me
know.  I appreciate your help.

Thanks
Ted