-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In a message dated, Fri, 5 Oct 2001 17:28:21 -0400, Brian Clark [BC] wrote: ... SC>> The current GPG plugin from both TB and SB are frustration SC>> motives for those of us that use GPG.
BC> Does this mean that no one has gotten the GnuPG plugin in TB! to work BC> _ever_? The GnuPG plug-in works but its smart matching functionality makes it tedious to use at times and decrypting is a pain. I used to think the plug-in was broken until I learnt how smart-matching worked. For you to be able to sign a message, your 'From' name and address *together*, must match one of the UID's of your signing key. A matching e-mail address isn't enough. It isn't enough to have the name and address used associated with different UID's in the key ring. The name and address combo must exactly match one of the UID's. For example: If one of the UID's on my keyring is Allie Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and I use the From address Allie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, signing the message would produce an error. I need to create a UID exactly as that of the From address for the signing to work. The same goes for encryption. When you wish to encrypt a message, the plug-in will look for a UID/s on your key ring that exactly matches the one/s in the To: field. If the name/address combination/s don't exactly match, then the encryption attempt will produce an error. Say Brian Clark sends me a message with the from name simply 'Brian'. I reply to the message and wish to encrypt it. The To address is Brian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> However, the UID on your public key is Brian Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. The encryption attempt will fail. Once you work within the constraints of smart matching, signing an encrypting 'works'. The advantage of smart-matching is that you can use multiple key-rings automatically. IOW's, you could create a different key for each of your e-mail address and auto-sign your messages with the appropriate key, all the time, through smart matching. The same goes for encryption, if you have multiple keys for a recipient. The smart-matching will choose the correct key for encryption. Most will agree that smart-matching is more a detriment than a benefit for most and their should at the facility to disable it as desired. Signature checking works just fine. However, auto-retrieval of keys not on the local key ring is a problem when using Win2k. This is however, a GnuPG and not a plug-in problem. Decrypting is the painful part. Whenever you wish to decrypt, the plug-in produces a pop-up window asking for the KeyID of the key to decrypt with and the password!!!! It doesn't auto-select the key to decrypt the message with!!! This is terrible. So I use GnuPG Shell for decrypting. At present, I use the plug-in for signature checking, signing messages (all the time without problems), and encrypting, once there's no error because of smart matching failure. It doesn't even produce a list of the keys to choose from when the encryption fails to make an exact UID match. So all in all, the plug-in works but the smart-matching can lead to a lot of failed operations and the plug-in offers no graceful way out of the error that occurs, such as manually selecting keys for the operations when the smart-match attempt fails. GnuPG Shell nicely takes up the shortfalls of the plug-in and at present, using GnuPG is not very far behind the ease of using PGP. - -- �Allie C Martin �� List Moderator (and fellow end-user) PGP Key: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Subject=PGPPubKey1 __________________________________________________________ MUA: The Bat! 1.54 Beta/9 [OS: Windows 2000 Service Pack 2] __ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6a (Win32) Comment: Sealed for security. iEYEARECAAYFAju+NjUACgkQV8nrYCsHF+LidACg9Z73mx0Q57xCk4xMIhQ+4/4V LpQAnAhwtGJo5Cciz9cdk94jy5fpmGuq =ZtJ1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ______________________________________________________ Archives : http://tbtech.thebat.dutaint.com Moderators : mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
