* What's this?
-EasyPG is a fully functional GnuPG interface for Emacs. It has two
-aspects
-
-- The EasyPG Assistant
- A GUI frontend of GnuPG
-- The EasyPG Library
- A library to interact with GnuPG
+EasyPG is a GnuPG interface for Emacs. It has two aspects: convenient
+tools which allow to use GnuPG from Emacs (EasyPG Assistant), and a
+fully functional interface library to GnuPG (EasyPG Library).
* Requirements
-** GNU Emacs 21.4 or XEmacs 21.4
+** GNU Emacs 21.4, XEmacs 21.4, or later
-** GnuPG 1.4.3
+** GnuPG 1.4.3 or later
* Quick start
M-x dired
(mark some files)
: e (or M-x epa-dired-do-encrypt)
- (select recipients and click [OK])
+ (select recipients by 'm' and click [OK])
* MUA Integration
The EasyPG Library can be used in combination with various MUA (Mail
-User Agents.)
+User Agents).
** CVS version of Gnus
-CVS version of Gnus has the native EasyPG binding, simply put the
-following line into your ~/.emacs.
+CVS version of Gnus uses EasyPG by default. To make sure of that,
+check mml2015-use set to 'epg. Other options which affect on the
+EasyPG are
+
+ mml2015-signers
+ mml2015-encrypt-to-self
+ mml2015-cache-passphrase
+ mml2015-passphrase-cache-expiry
+ mml2015-verbose
+
+NOTE: You don't need pgg-epg.el in this case.
+
+** PGG based MUA
+
+PGG is outdated PGP library used by old Gnus (<= v5.11), MH-E, etc.
-(setq mml2015-use 'epg)
+There is a PGG backend written EasyPG called pgg-epg.el. However,
+EasyPG API is a superset of PGG and pgg-epg.el provides nothing but
+compatibility with PGG.
-Other options which affect on the binding are
+Limitations of PGG
-mml2015-signers
-mml2015-encrypt-to-self
-mml2015-cache-passphrase
-mml2015-passphrase-cache-expiry
-mml2015-verbose
+- PGG doesn't have a user interface to select keys for typical
+ cryptographic operations
+- PGG can't handle messages signed with multiple keys correctly
+- PGG trusts any keys for encryption
** SEMI based MUA
There is an EasyPG capable SEMI library called EMIKO-EasyPG. It can
be downloaded from the same site of the EasyPG distribution point.
-** PGG based MUA
-
-PGG is somewhat outdated PGP library used by old Gnus, MH-E, etc.
-
-There is a PGG backend using EasyPG called pgg-epg.el. However,
-pgg-epg.el provides no more additional features than pgg-gpg.el,
-because PGG's API is restricted so that it supports old PGP 2.x/5.x.
-
* Security
-There are security pitfalls around Emacs.
+There are security pitfalls around Emacs. EasyPG is written with
+avoiding them.
** Passphrase may leak to a temporary file.