Changing preferences

[Robert J. Hansen]

David Shaw wrote:
> The preferences on the keys are used by people encrypting a message
> *to* those keys.  It indicates that algorithms the keyholders prefer.

If AES256 is listed first in personal-cipher-preferences, it doesn't
matter if AES256 is listed first in the recipient's keyprefs or last;
AES256 is what will be chosen.

Since the ordering of the recipient's keyprefs have absolutely no effect
on the ultimate selection of the algorithm, it seems pretty clear to me
we're talking about a capability set as opposed to a preference list.
Preferences are ranked lists; in the absence of that ranking, all we're
talking about is an unranked set of acceptable algorithms.

Unless, of course, I have completely misunderstood how GnuPG selects
algorithms.  Which is always a possibility.