Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!bru-cc!haley!kquinlan
From: kquinlan@haley.edg.cv.co.uk (Kevin Quinlan)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Using crypt() in encode.c
Message-ID: <233@haley.edg.cv.co.uk>
Date: 14 Feb 89 19:28:09 GMT
References: <484@maxim.ERBE.SE> <490@acheron.UUCP>
Reply-To: kquinlan@edg.cv.co.uk (Kevin Quinlan)
Organization: Prime Computer R & D, Penn St, Amersham, England
Lines: 28

In article <490@acheron.UUCP> clarke@acheron.UUCP (Ed Clarke) writes:

>I would really like to have 'rot13' put in place of the crypt() ...
>rot13 is simple, trivial to implement and anyone can decode it.

True - and hence it is not very useful as an encryption method.

>For secure mail, crypt the data outside of elm.  Use the program of
>your choice and uuencode if it produces non printable data.

This is much more of a pain. With the present method, I can
encrypt *part* of a message and read such messages without
leaving elm - even temporarily.

It seems to me that leaving the present method in elm does no harm,
if you don't want to use it or you can't use it - then there are
alternatives outside of elm, but if you can - currently it is
very convenient - and surely that's what it is all about and why
we are all looking at this news group and not one on ucbmail or
binmail etc..

But there may be an alternative - some time ago someone
mentioned the RFC 822 header "Encrypted".  Has anyone ever seen
this used? - and couldn't elm be allowed to use one of several
encryption schemes and the details put in an "Encrypted" header?


 +---------------------------------------------------------------+
 | Kevin Quinlan, Prime Computer R & D, Amersham, HP7 0PX, UK    |
 | kquinlan@cvedg.prime.com                                      |
 | kquinlan@uk.co.cv.edg                  +44 494 714771 x 269   |
 +---------------------------------------------------------------+