RE: Seahorse re: 2.4 Proposed Modules

[Jacob Perkins <jap1 users sourceforge net>]

On Mon, 2003-05-05 at 04:12, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> > From: Jacob Perkins [mailto:jap1 users sourceforge net] 
> > URL: http://seahorse.sourceforge.net
> > 
> > Description: Seahorse is a frontend for gnupg. The goal is to try to
> > integrate seahorse/gpg into gnome in order to make key management and
> > crypto easier.
> 
> So could someone who uses gnupgp try this and comment on it? I'm ignorant
> but I'll try to ask useful questions anyway. My first ignorant questions
> are:
> 1. Does this need to integrate with mailers, such as evolution, at all?

Not really. The only benefits of integration would be a common
passphrase dialog and maybe a nice way for key retrieval. Mailer stuff
would be key/identity oriented while seahorse is more key-ring oriented.

> 2. Are there other crypto systems that we would want to integrate with
> GNOME?

Most of the stuff in seahorse can be reused for Cryptographic Message
Syntax (S/MIME), though that isn't such a priority.

> 
> > Key management is basically as complete as can be right now, 
> > except for
> > key server support.
> 
> Please tell us about these key servers.

Key servers are a central repository for publishing public keys. Without
them, keys could only be exchanged through email. There is no support
for sending or getting keys to/from a key server because the api is not
especially nice and I have given other things higher priorities.

> 
> > Future plans include a gedit plugin,
> 
> Why would we want a gedit plugin? So far it seems roughtly analogous to
> FileHandler, and I wouldn't want a "gzip this" menu item in gedit.

Maybe you want a signature embedded in the document, instead of as a
separate file. Or you want an encrypted section of text. Maybe you just
want to paste text into gedit for decrypt/verification instead of saving
it as a file and using nautilus.

> 
> > an out-of-process context to
> > synchronize the key-ring,
> 
> Can you tell us more about this?

At the moment, if seahorse is open and you import keys from nautilus,
then those keys will not show up in seahorse until after a restart.
Having an out-of-process context could fix this.

> 
> > nautilus property pages, and a 
> > gnome-vfs view
> > of the keys.
> 
> When would this be useful?

For property pages, the file type may not tell everything about the
file. .asc files could be plain text, a signature, or encrypted text.
.gpg files could be encrypted data or exported keys. Property pages
would allow a little analysis to be done.
For the gnome-vfs view, it might make exporting keys or viewing their
properties easier.
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