GUI: PGP vs novices

[Johnathan Corgan]

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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 :)

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Johnathan Corgan       "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"
jcorgan at netcom.com                       -Isaac Asimov
PGP Public Key:        http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html
Or send email to:      pgp-public-keys at pgp.ai.mit.edu Subj: GET jcorgan
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