Re: [xPG] New Member

[<in...@fa...>]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 07:21:57AM +0100, M. Jerger wrote:
> Will xPG be an entire substitution for gnupg ?

If someone gets around to implementing the stuff, yes ;-) The Cryptix
OpenPGP lib is already pretty good feature-wise but its lacking v3
(i.e., pgp 2.6) compatibility when writing.
 
> What's iButton ? The infamous java-micro-processor ?

Well, its this cell-battery sized java cpu with some RAM on it that
connects serially to any host.  See http://www.ibutton.com/
 
> - Can you give me a short overview of the cvs ?

I'll do it for the library stuff, gulliver hopefully jumps in and does
it for the ui stuff.  

Some general info: Browse the CVS through
	http://fargonauten.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs
Anonymous CVS is at 
	:pserver:an...@fa...:/var/cvs
(empty password)

So, firstly forget the "openpgp-provider" stuff, all you want is in
"xpg".  The top-level stuff should be self-explanatory.  The stuff in
src/xpg/ is as follows:
	block    -- a couple of interfaces for generic crypto format access
	openpgp  -- An openpgp-implementation of those interfaces, mostly complete
	provider -- A generic Certificate, C-Factory and KeyStore based on the 'block'
		    interfaces, currently slightly openpgp specific

	test	 -- JUnit test cases, testing data, etc.

The idea behind the 'block' interfaces is that we want to support the
PKCS family of standards, too, eventually, and the interfaces are
supposed to be the unifying layer.

> - Can I generate an new private Key, encrypt something and then also decrypt ?

Of course you can do that using the JCE, but the result can not yet be
written as OpenPGP packets..  Let me explain:
	
The stuff in xpg.openpgp can read the OpenPGP-packet format and the
result of that are immutable packet objects.  The state of the art is
that these provide enough information to get keys and data *out* -- so
you can decrypt and check signatures.  To create packets from
JCE-level objects, a couple of "Builder" classes are planned that will
do the necessary conversions and then create immutable packet objects
again.  This has not yet happened.  Its actually not too much effort
but I wanted to get the reading part feature-complete first.

If you want, you could get started on the Builder classes.  As I said,
it should not be too much effort, it will familiarize you with the
OpenPGP standard and its fairly independent of the work the others are
doing.  It would also really boost the functionality quickly.

On a side note, one final obstacle to writing is that we don't have a
BlockOutput that will generate a stream of packets.  I estimate that
to be a couple of hours of work for v4, have a look at the
SignatureOutput for the general idea.

> - How can I get the hidden cvs stuff ?

What do you mean by that?  I'm not aware of a "hidden cvs" :-)

Ingo