TEXTMODE Option in Gpg4Win ?

David Shaw dshaw at jabberwocky.com
Mon Jun 23 20:37:21 CEST 2008


On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 09:03:42AM -0700, Larry Seabrook wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We are using the Gpg4Win product for encrypting files.
> 
> The files we are encrypting and sending are text files with carriage-return and linefeed characters at the end of each line (record).
> 
> The receiver of these files needs the CR and LF characters preserved by the encryption-decryption process. The files contain valid text data only.
> 
> When the file is decrypted by the receiver using another PGP-compliant product, the CR and LF characters are lost.
> 
> I BELIEVE we need to use the TEXTMODE=ON option when encrypting the file but the GUI for Gpg4Win does not reference this option, not can I find any reference to a Configuration File in the Gpg4Win GUI or documentation.
> 
> QUESTION:  How is TEXTMODE=ON or it's equivalent set when using Gpg4Win?

"TEXTMODE=ON" is an old PGP 2.x command.  It has nothing to do with
GPG.  Plus, it's actually the opposite of what you want.  In OpenPGP,
a text file is canonicalized into a standard format when encrypted,
and re-canonicalized to the platform local format when decrypted.
Both of these steps can change the CRLF line ending.

If you want to guarantee that there are no changes at all, and the
decrypted data is a byte for byte copy of the original, then turn off
textmode.

David



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