Q: Why doesn't --pgp2 warn you if you don't have IDEA

[smu johnson]

Hi,

My first post to this mailing list!

Well, I was playing around with GnuPG and PGP 2.6.x today, and I'm curious
as to why the option --pgp2 doesn't warn you if you do not have the IDEA
algorithm setup for GnuPG.

I understand the politics as to why IDEA is not included due to patent
restrictions and complications, but that doesn't really explain why a
warning isn't issued when GnuPG knows that your attempts to send messages to
old PGP 2 users are a waste of time.

Shouldn't a warning be issued (and maybe a link to the FAQ page for IDEA) to
explain what is happening, instead of the end user finding out the hard-way
that all his private messages encrypted with 3DES using --pgp2 are
unintelligible to the recipient?

Just my 2 cents... thank you for reading!

-- 
smu johnson <smujohnson at gmail.com>
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