Changing preferences

[David Shaw]

On Sep 21, 2008, at 10:52 PM, Kevin Hilton wrote:

> I'm not here to create an argument, however the option(s)
>
> cipher-algo
> digest-algo
>
> is specifically addressed within the documentation.

I know. I wrote the part of the documentation that told people not to  
use them.

GPG is a very flexible program, and as such, it gives you tens of ways  
to do things wrong.  All of these method are off by default, and  
generally protected by strong warning messages that tell people when  
they're shooting themselves in the foot.  People frequently write in  
to this list needing help on some simple question.  My heart always  
sinks when I see some of the responses that take a simple question,  
and over-answer it in such a way as to guarantee that this poor person  
is going to be utterly baffled as to what is going on.

If someone wants to know how to set their preference list, they're not  
trying for new and fun ways to violate the spec.  Why even mention  
that it is possible to violate the spec?  How does it help the  
questioner to know that "if you use the flag that you're not supposed  
to use, and ignore the warnings telling you to not use it... hey, you  
can get GPG to do something illegal"?

To make this even more silly, you actually took the trouble to remove  
the part of my quote where I said WHY it was a bad idea.

David