Re: encrypt.el in No Gnus 0.7

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:56:08 -0500 Richard Stallman <address@hidden> 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)/documentation/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