design question - is conventional (symmetric key) encryption discouraged?

[Ken M. <ken...@gm...>]

Hi, all.  Looks like activity in this project is pretty light, but i'm
hoping some of the folks knowledgable about mailcrypt's design are
reachable, and can give me some guidance.

I'm incorporating topic encryption into my emacs outliner, 'allout',
and would like to include both symmetric (which maybe mailcrypt refers
to as "conventional") and key-pair pgp/gpg modes.  I'm a novice when
it comes to public key encryption, and may be making things harder on
myself than they need to be.

In fact, for personal, day-to-day uses like journal entries and such,
i see symmetric encryption (enhanced with key verification and
hinting) as being the default mode - key-pair being somewhat
heavyweight, ideally having a difficult passphrase and choice
restricted to only established keys.  It's quite possible that
thinking is misguided, something suggested by the lack of provision,
and even apparent obstacles, that mailcrypt facilities pose to doing
symmetric encryption.  Mailcrypt does provide nicely for symmetric
*decryption*, which further leads me to suspect that the impedence
against symmetric key encryption is a deliberate design choice.

I could do symmetric encryption with crypt++, using mailcrypt for
key-pair encryption and all decryption, but would love to not depend
on both packages.  First, though, i wanted to understand the situation
better.  So i'm asking:

 - whether i've missed something, and i can do symmetric-key
   pgp/gpg encryption with mailcrypt without major contortions

 - if not, whether it's so hard on purpose, and if so, why.

 - If it is hard, but not on purpose, would any of you be willing to work
   with me to make it easier to do symmetric-key encryption?  (the
   machinery would be pretty trivial, but keeping consistent with
   existing mailcrypt stuff would take more attention.)

Thanks for any responses!

Ken Manheimer
ken...@gm...