At 05:48 AM 12/10/96 -0800, Alan Olsen
[Note: this is CCed to the developer for two reasons. First, I wanted him to know of the review. Second, I have another two bugs at the bottom that I have not reported.]
Hi...I'm the developer. I'd like to respond to these items that Alan Olsen listed so that everyone knows what the heck I'm doing with the Eudora/PGP Plug-In, a.k.a EPPI. [snippet about what EPPI is deleted]
The functions provided are:
-- Clearsign Message -- Decrypt Message -- Encrypt Message -- Verify Signature -- Add Key -- Paste (Insert) Key
These appear under the Edit menu in the plug-ins submenu. (It would be nice for these to be in their own seperate menu, but that may be beyond the scope of the plug-in developers kit.)
Unfortunately, the plug-in developers kit, called the Eudora Messaging System API (EMS API), is very limited, and only provides the functions necessary to get the incoming or currently-displayed mail message, and to paste the results of the plug-in into said message. It gives _no_ control over the Eudora menus. In fact, you can't even activate any arbitrary menu or function of Eudora, nor can you read any information besides what is passed to you by the various functions which call your plug-in. Many of the problems below have been called to my attention. I'll note those that have, and add to my list those that haven't. I'll also explain what I'm doing to correct the problems. If anyone has a better suggestion of fixing a specific problem, please let me know.
These are the problems/bugs I have found so far:
-- If you do not define a default ID in the PGP config.txt, it will take the last ID generated on the secret key ring. (This is a common problem. This is not the only app that has it.)
Already known. I'll have a field to specify default ID, with an entry for the hex key ID in case there are more than one of the same user ID.
-- The program does not word wrap before sending the message to get signed. This breaks the signature when Eudora word wraps it opon sending the message. (Another common problem. I remember a bunch of apps fixing this one at one time a few months ago...)
Already known. I'll perform the word-wrap in the plug-in.
-- If you decrypt a message, the mail headers are destroyed. (I just discovered this one last night. It makes replying a bit of a challenge...)
Already known. I'll change the way the plug-in replaces text by only replacing the text between the PGP BEGIN and END headers.
-- The plug-in does not deal with "personalities". (This is not a bug, but something that would be *REAL* helpful. Now if you could get personalities that connected to nym servers.)
There's not much I can do about this. I have no way of knowing in the plug-in that a user has switched personalities, so there is no way to notify the plug-in to use a different configuration. I could, however, add personalities to the plug-in, which would at least let the user select different configurations in it to match the current personality being used. Comments?
All in all, this is a useful plug-in. It has a few rough spots, but that is to be expected. (This is a 0.2 release.)
Thank you. Yes, I knew it was going to be rough at first, hence the version numbering of 0.x. I'll get to 1.0 when I feel it's truly a polished Eudora plug-in worthy of paying for (though I plan to keep it freeware).
BTW, this is the original information as to where to get the plug-in. How much of this is current, i am not certain... (The mailing list was broken according to Lucky Green.)
Sadly, my account was unexpectedly yanked out from under me, so that
information is wrong. However, thanks to some generous folks who responded
to my plight, I have some temporary locations set up, until I can find a
permanent home. Here is the updated information:
Download version 0.20 from the Web:
* http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/5065/epp16v02.zip
(for 16-bit version of Eudora 3.0 for Windows 3.1)
* http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/5065/epp32v02.zip
(for 32-bit version of Eudora 3.0 for Windows NT/95)
If you don't have Web access, but have FTP access, try the following sites.
Note that if the version you are trying to get was released today or just a
few days ago, it may not have shown up at the sites below yet, so give it a
few days:
papa.indstate.edu: /pub/winsock-l/mail/epp16v02.zip
/pub/winsock-l/Windows95/mail/epp32v02.zip
/pub/winsock-l/WindowsNT/mail/epp32v02.zip
ftp.winsite.com: /pub/pc/win3/winsock/epp16v02.zip
/pub/pc/win95/winsock/epp32v02.zip
If you want to be automatically notified of new versions, send e-mail to
EPPINEWS@professional.org with the following message body:
join
stop
You will not be able to post to this list. It is merely a convenient way to
receive notification of new updates to EPPI.
Send comments to: dgal@cad.gatech.edu
I have noticed that GeoCities has had some problems last week. Hopefully,
these are corrected by now. If not, try the FTP sites.
- Damon Gallaty