Re: Proposal for Seahorse inclusion in GNOME 2.18

[Nate Nielsen <nielsen-list memberwebs com>]

Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Is the SSH support integrated to Nautilus? For example, if I were to try
> and access the files on a remote server using Nautilus/gnome-vfs, would
> I see seahorse helping me authorise/deny the server's key first?

No, not right now. But that's something worth looking into. Currently
all of Seahorse's integration does not require patches to other projects
(as this would), but it doesn't have to stay that way.

>> Plugins
>>   * File encryption (nautilus plugin)
>>   * Text encryption (gedit plugin)
>>   * A panel-applet for those with special clipboard encryption needs.
> 
> What's that applet actually for? I don't quite understand how that would
> be used and/or useful to the majority of our users.

Yup, and I think that if Seahorse is included GNOME some things may need
to be disabled by default. For example the nautilus extension (adds 2
menu items that it adds to the right click menu) should be 'off' by
default, with a simple method to turn it on.

>> The Seahorse developers' long term goal is to make encryption easy to
>> use within GNOME. Besides filling a need for a key manager, inclusion in
>> GNOME would help us realize that goal. For example:
>>
>>   * EDS Address book integration
>>   * About-me: 'my' encryption key selection
>>   * More intelligent trust metrics based on frequency of use
> 
> Do you already patches for some of this functionality?
> A patch to replace Evolution's "Contact Certificates", at least as a
> compile-time option, would be a good start.

True. The first patch might be to help Evolutions PGP key selection.

While work has been done on certificates, it probably won't be done just
yet due to some locking issues in NSS:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351858

> I believe that the integration should be done ahead of time, even if it
> is a compile-time option, something that users/distributions have got to
> opt-in to.

True. Once we've finished our current polish and bug fixing work we
could start working on things like that.

Cheers,
Nate