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I just think (boy I feel repetitive) that there should be something inside the software so the user has the option to sign, or sign on the fly. If I type up a message and think, "hey, I really want people to know this is from me", It would be really cool to just hit a button on the toolbar, or grab a menu option to sign automatically before sending. You don't have to sign everything. But, you don't have to go out to another application (of any sort) in order to sign. It's right there in front of you.

To add to this thread: I'm working on a Windows based product that, while not achieving the level of integration that you describe, does enable one to assign signature, remailing, and encryption options from within the email message itself. The product works at the Windows Sockets layer, intercepting mail as it is sent from the mail application to the SMTP host, and performing the above crypto related functions based on text placed at the top of the mail message. - From the user perspective, I plan to make the product look just like the (excellent) Unix based PGP front end, premail. So, while you're typing your mail, if you want to add a signature, just add the line Signature: <userid> to the top (where userid is something that identifies the secret key to use). Features will include automatic signing, encryption, or remailing based upon destination address of the outgoing email. Incoming mail will be handled similarly, though there are some security issues surrounding automated access to your secret keyring that I haven't thought through yet. A major complication that I've come up against is installation. Somehow I've got to provide a painless way of discovering the Winsock stack in use on a machine, and installing my WINSOCK.DLL so that it gets loaded instead of the real one (which my software then loads on its own and intercepts calls to.) This is really easy to do manually when one has knowledge of such things; it is a major pain in the ass to come up with a way of doing this that doesn't require the user to know anything about Windows Sockets or DLL's or path variables, etc. On the other hand, the pain of installation only occurs once. For actual use, adding control lines to the top of one's mail is pretty simple. Not as good as having, say, "Encrypt", "Sign", and "Remail" buttons or menu items, but it should do for now. I may or may not have something to show at the next Cpunks meeting--depends on how frustrated I get with dealing with Windows' programming paradigm :) ======================================================================= Johnathan Corgan "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" jcorgan@netcom.com -Isaac Asimov PGP Public Key: http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html Or send email to: pgp-public-keys@pgp.ai.mit.edu Subj: GET jcorgan ======================================================================= -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLviluE1Diok8GKihAQEGfAP/TRvp2ulO5MZJplYhwoFl5hvOmvSj1nNg N25aNm4++xzdywZ7ffPhIW6v2euk27eZLJS3p+CLcZ2JWQglmqWube3lQfg9mYsB cTf+w5Jyg+lDwvXExJ+9Fqe1mZLSIS+f2jeuAi6nJ5nFyeyYWTiWBmXP0gK7YQhC 5mCFzczhP8Q= =A9RZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----