gnupg: request for small change in output

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> writes on Sat, 4 Oct 2003 10:53:25 +1000:

>> Seems like a good idea to leave things as they are.  And then
>> somebody might get around to fixing the key servers that have
>> the silly requirement for the leading 0x; in the meantime, it's
>> not that hard to add it in to a cut'n'paste of the ID.

I doubt that key servers will make that change: the leading 0x shows
definitely that the string is not a personal name, and may be used to
redirect lookups into lookups-by-key and lookups-by-name.  There are
legitimate personal names that can be spelled with hexadecimal letters
A-Fa-f: Abe, Babe, Bade, Bead, Beef, Beebe (my own name), Dacca, Dade,
Decca, ...

While experts might remember to supply the 0x prefix in lookups on key
servers, novices will likely not, and might erroneously conclude that
the key is not registered.

PGP includes the 0x prefix in all of its output.

I therefore contend that gnupg DOES need a change, and that the change
is very simple ([s][n]printf formats %08x become 0x%08x), and doesn't
impact any of the I18N language translations (apart from the trivial
substitution of the format item).

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