Determining algorithm to be used?

[Johan Wevers]

David Shaw wrote:

>You never want to use --cipher-algo with public key encryption.  It's
>only safe to use with --symmetric.  The reason why is simple: the
>above system to choose algorithms to use is safe - it will never pick
>an algorithm that will result in an unusable message by one of the
>recipients.

Yeah, well, that's the theory. Recently I sent encrypted messages to a
friend but got replies that she could not decrypt them. It turned out
that het key - generated with pgp 6.something - had preferences set
that were incompatible with he new setup (gpg 1.2.4 without IDEA).
After I understood this and overrode the cipher algo manually
decrypting my messages was no problem any more.

-- 
ir. J.C.A. Wevers         //  Physics and science fiction site:
johanw at vulcan.xs4all.nl   //  http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/index.html
PGP/GPG public keys at http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/pgpkeys.html