Re: gpg et co

[Carlos Morgado <chbm chbm nu>]

On 2001.07.12 14:29:10 +0100 Brian Stafford wrote:
> On Thu, 12 July 14:18 Carlos Morgado wrote:
> 
> > not very practical cause gpg/pgp signatures are sent in mime attachments. 
> > the plugin would need a way to access the whole message
> > 
> > honestly, i think this belongs in gnome-mime or VFS, not the mta itself.
> > the "neat" design would be to have balsa being a Mailbox or MessageStream
> > or whatnot server for Bonobo/VFS and then have a crypto server capable of 
> > fetching messages from balsa and oking them or not. also you could say 
> > take this message and give me a back a application/gpg-encripted mime
> attach
> > or a gpg-signature. having that in place, the crypto server and mail
> server
> > choices would be left to the user.
> > bloat ? why of course! but this is Gnome ;)
> 
> I would argue that since MIME is a mechanism for representing complex
> hierarchical documents, all MIME functionality in a program should be
> handled by a library specifically designed for that purpose. (Gmime
> comes to mind.)  Encrpytion and signing support should be an integral part
> of that mechanism, i.e. from within, not bolted on to the outside of it.
> 

iirc Gmime is now a part of the Bonobo/VFS component structure. i actually
meant Gmime but wasn't very explicit. sorry.


> Of course within such a library it could hook into the crypto server
> via Corba, Bonobo or whatever (it might even expose its own interface by
> such means) - or it could just link with OpenSSL or something in the
> traditional way.
> 

of course. balsa, vfs/gmime and the crypto server would all cooperate via 
corba. the crypto server would know gpg,pgp, openssl or whatever other 
methods are used. gmime would know it needed the cryptoserv assistance
when balsa handed it a mime signed message to parse
of course, corba could just be removed from that picture, but seems to be
a _neat_, functional and gnomic way of doing it. 

-- 
Carlos Morgado - chbm(at)chbm(dot)nu - http://chbm.nu/ -- gpgkey: 0x1FC57F0A
http://wwwkeys.pgp.net/ FP:0A27 35D3 C448 3641 0573 6876 2A37 4BB2 1FC5 7F0A
Software is like sex; it's better when it's free. - Linus Torvalds