Mailing List Archive: Win 98/2000 Shell for GPG

Several people have written some pretty nice shell programs for PGP 2.6.1.
These programs are freeware but not unfortunately not GPL. They have
largely fallen into disuse with the advent of PGP 5.x and above, and it
would be great if they could be used with GPG, which remains a command-line
program. (I'm really looking forward to GPA, the GUI version of GPG, but no
telling when it will be stable and usable with Win 98/2000.)

One of the better looking shells is "Scytale" written by Patrick Buseine
(mailto:buseine@bigfoot.com) and available at
http://scytale.rever.fr/main.html. Some nice screen shots are at
http://scytale.rever.fr/brief.html. I REALLY want to figure out a way to
use this software with GPG to obtain a freeware crypto solution with an
easy-to-use graphic interface that I can distribute to clients and colleagues.

The command line for GPG is a bit different than that for PGP, but the
software is otherwise largely compatible. Has anyone thought of
implementing a "PGP emulation mode" for GPG so that it would be
command-line compatible with PGP and thus usable with one of these shells?
(It would be simple enough for users to rename the file "pgp.exe" for this
purpose.) Ideally, the authors of this software would modify it to be
GPG-compatible or, better yet, put it under GPL so others can do so. (You
might want to contact Mr. Buseine about that request.)

Ed Suominen
Registered Patent Agent
Web Site: http://eepatents.com
PGP Public Key: http://eepatents.com/key

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Ed Suominen wrote:

> Several people have written some pretty nice shell programs for PGP 2.6.1.

I know, I even tried one myself (for Linux) but my result was certainly not
ready for use by unexperienced users. I had problems with pgp's limited
piping abilities.

> These programs are freeware but not unfortunately not GPL.

But is the source available?

> The command line for GPG is a bit different than that for PGP, but the
> software is otherwise largely compatible. Has anyone thought of
> implementing a "PGP emulation mode" for GPG

Yes, it's called pgpgpg. Unfortunately some options are not covered, I
failed in letting gpg function in combination with elm with this program.
But fortunately pgpgpg is GPL.

> Ideally, the authors of this software would modify it to be
> GPG-compatible or, better yet, put it under GPL so others can do so.

Legally you don't need a GPL for that. Other licences, like the BSD license,
or even declaring the source freeware, will also suffice. And I noticed from
discussions with windows programmers (OK, with other windows programmers - I
admit that I also do that for a living) that many of them don't like the
virus-like character of the GPL. So perhaps this is an alternative if he
doesn't like the GPL.

--
ir. J.C.A. Wevers // Physics and science fiction site:
johanw@vulcan.xs4all.nl // http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/index.html
PGP/GPG public keys at http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/pgpkeys.html

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