Re: encrypt.el in No Gnus 0.7

    Steganography is useful, in particular, and GnuPG
doesn't support it.
    Users could hide secret information, or messages for
other users, or
    watermarks.

Steganography is certainly useful, but the question is
whether users
want to use encrypt.el.

    RS>     - pure Lisp ciphers for quick experimentation
and sharing

    RS> That seems unimportant to me.

    I think cryptography is a field where experimentation is
very
    important.  Wouldn't you like to see Emacs become a
breeding ground for
    cryptography work?

Encryption programs generally need to be fast.
Emacs Lisp doesn't seem very good for the job.


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On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:56:08 -0500 Richard Stallman
<rmsgnu.org> wrote: 

RS>     Steganography is useful, in particular, and GnuPG
doesn't support it.
RS>     Users could hide secret information, or messages
for other users, or
RS>     watermarks.

RS> Steganography is certainly useful, but the question
is whether users
RS> want to use encrypt.el.

Well, it's the only library within Emacs that could support
it AFAIK (I
can write a sample implementation if necessary).  Whether
that's
sufficient to make it wanted by the users, I don't know,
since it's
neither been advertised to the users nor does it support
steganography
yet.

RS>     I think cryptography is a field where
experimentation is very
RS>     important.  Wouldn't you like to see Emacs become
a breeding ground for
RS>     cryptography work?

RS> Encryption programs generally need to be fast.
RS> Emacs Lisp doesn't seem very good for the job.

GnuPG uses an external library to do its job (libgcrypt as
documented at
http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/d
ocumentation/manuals/gcrypt/).  We could use
that library *and others* directly from encrypt.el,
providing the extra
speed.  But as I mentioned, what's important is
experimentation.  Speed
is not my concern, since the Lisp code can be rewritten in C
when it's
not experimental anymore.

Ted


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