Export the smallest possible version of a public key

[David Shaw]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 01:10:32PM -0500, Dmitri Vassilenko wrote:
> Hi, list.
> 
> I'd like to send someone the smallest possible version (armored) of
> my public key containing only the primary key/primary uid/self sig.
> 
> At the moment, I don't see any way to do this, other than deleting
> all extra data locally, exporting the key, and then
> re(stor/fetch)ing it from a keyserver.
> 
> I've looked through the FAQ on gnupg.org, but couldn't find anything
> relevant.  There was a section on restoring a public key from a
> private one, but that seems to be more complicated than the way
> described above.

Restoring a public key from a private key has nothing to do with what
you are asking.  It's not that it is more complicated or more
simple... it's just unrelated to the problem.

There is no feature in GnuPG that does what you want.  It's asked for
often enough that if I have a few minutes this weekend, I'll probably
do it for 1.4.  It's very simple.

In the meantime, the method you are using is fine.

David