Which keyring for Public Keys ?

[Frank Tobin]

David Livingstone, on 2002-03-20, wrote:

> In various documents I have come across the 2 following conflictingstatements :
>
> The private keyring stores corresponding private & public keys; the
> public keyring stores (other peoples') public keys.

> The private keyring stores only private keys; the public keyring stores
> ones own and other peoples' public keys.

GnuPG follows your second description.  The 'keyrings' are inseparate
files, secring.gpg and pubring.gpg.

The concept of 'keyrings' is really an implementation issue, separate from
any specification.  An implementation could put all the keys in one
'keyring' (file/table/etc).

In common lingo a "my X keyring" is often used to mean "all the X keys I
have available to me".

-- 
Frank Tobin		http://www.neverending.org/~ftobin/