On Wednesday 10 May 2006 11:06, Mikael Lammentausta wrote:
> It would be really convenient if digikam could support
also
> encryption (through kgpg) and display a locked icon for
files with a
> suffix of asc|gpg|pgp. I encrypt some photographs via
Konqueror and
> it's a bit unconvenient.
>
>
> Mikael
There are two reasons for encrypting photographs: having
data on your
computer that cannot be accessed by anybody but yourself,
and to send
the photographs in a secure encrypted form by email.
Taking the second of these two options first, since you are
using Kgpg,
then you will be using gpg to encrypt your photographs.
This can
easily be done with PGP/MIME, which encrypts the message and
any
attachments. The drawback is that your recipient must also
be using a
PGP/MIME enabled email program. PGP/MIME is not a function
of gpg but
of the MUA (email program) that uses gpg. KMail provides
this function
natively, as does Sylpheed and Sylpheed-Claws. Thunderbird
and the
email part of Seamonkey and Mozilla suites require you to
install
Enigmail for gpg encryption of mail, but this also includes
the
PGP/MIME element. So if you are sending photographs by
email, the
tools are available without you having first to encrypt the
attachment.
As far as encrypting photographs themselves through gpg, it
is a two
part process. Because of its historical roots, the OpenPGP
standard
(which gpg follows strictly) encrypts only us-ascii based
characters.
Therefore photographs need to be converted to a convenient
text base so
that the photographic data can be portrayed textually and
encrypted by
gpg. The most usual systems used are uuencode, base64, and
yenc, but
clearly if a photograph is encrypted, gpg must be present to
decrypt it
and then a conversion program must be present to reform the
photograph.
Most comprehensive newsreaders do the decoding on the fly -
but not the
decryption, and it would need to be decrypted before
decoding.
You could of course use S/MIME which is the encryption
method built into
most browsers to do the same thing, and then you could use
your browser
for quick decryption of your photograph. S/MIME is not the
same thing
as gpg or PGP/MIME, and requires you to obtain a
verification
certificate from a third party. For all normal uses S/MIME
is
perfectly secure but the introduction of a third party, plus
the nature
of S/MIME, makes gpg a much more secure system.
You seem to be using digiKam as a comprehensive front end
for graphic
editing tools. With respect to the developers I never
thought it to be
that, and there is no reason why you cannot move files with
the
suffix .asc, .gpg or .pgp to another directory yourself.
You could
find them through Krusader without firing up digiKam,
although S/MIME
decryption would not be possible
I do not think it reasonable for digiKam - being a front end
for gphoto2
and therefore a program for downloading digital images from
cameras -
to have this functionality. There is a case for Kgpg
incorporating the
function of encrypting and decrypting a binary file, but not
digiKam.
Perhaps you should refer your suggestion to the Kgpg mailing
list or
even the Enigmail and GnuPG-Users lists.
--
Old Rocker
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