How about "--with-packet-data" instead?

[David Shaw]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:50:46PM -0500, Michael Young wrote:

> > From: Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org>
> > 
> > On Mon, 20 Jan 2003 17:54:42 -0500, Michael Young said:
> > 
> > > The "--with-key-data" switch only dumps the MPIs, and that's
> > > not nearly enough for my needs.
> > 
> > > A "--with-packet-data" switch might be even more useful for
> > > scripting.  What do others think... would this be better?
> > 
> > That would expose details of the OpenPGP protocol; GnuPG is supposed
> > to hide this.
> 
> This seems like a pretty thin distinction that isn't always followed now.
> 
> The "--with-key-data" switch exposes some internals, too.  I can't say
> for sure, but I'd guess that this switch was offered to allow useful
> analysis (e.g., statistics on public keyrings), or to convert keys for
> use with another program.  The latter is exactly what I'd like to do
> with a "--with-packet-data" switch; exposing the packets allows easy
> reassembly into something that other OpenPGP applications can use.

How is this different than (for example) pgpdump?  It seems better to
keep this as a seperate utility than building it into GnuPG where it
wouldn't really serve a purpose the majority of the time.

David

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   David Shaw  |  dshaw at jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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