Beta for 2.1.1 available

[Hugo Hinterberger]

Hi MFPA,

>> Hi,
>>
>> I am still trying to find a working solution
>
> It is more likely you will find help if you start your own thread,
> with a subject like that matches what you are talking about.

I am currently not actively trying to get a working environment. I am
exploring the current state of affairs. I am also not comletely passive, as
you may have noticed.
I am not trying to get all my issues addressed, I was repeatedly told that
my expectations are way too high.
E. g.: How hard can it be to combine genealogy data with your contacts and
show a reminder when certain people (family members, ...) have an
anniversary or birthday coming up? In the area I grew up it is sometimes
customary to arrange a service in church for deceased family members – it
would be nice to have things like those pop up automatically in a calendar.

>>  to verify
>> incoming files and messages with GnuPG on Windows … and
>> I want the solution to be able to handle PGP/MIME
>> messages read through Gmane using elliptic curve based
>> keys.
>
> Let's break this requirement down.
>
> 1. Works on Windows.
>
>    In case it makes a difference to the range of available solutions,
>    32-bit or 64-bit? XP? Vista? 7? 8?...

Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 8.1 64-bit

>
> 2. able to handle PGP/MIME messages
>
>    Perhaps a mail client that integrates with GnuPG (either directly or
>    using a plugin.

I uninstalled Thunderbird and Enigmail since it was slooow and does not seem
to be able to handle Mime in news articles. It also created ambiguous
notifications for your signatures.

>    Or you could copy the message source to the clipboard or a text
>    file and decrypt/verify it there, but there are some message
>    encodings that seem to frustrate this approach.

I can verify clearsigned message. It is not anywhere near what I would
describe as user friendly, but it can be done.
I completely failed to manually verify PGP/MIME messages, on the command 
line, so far.
I have Symantec Encryption Desktop 10.3.2 in Limited Use/Unlicensed Mode
installed, that offers the PGP Viewer tool that is a complexity level above
using GPA (drag 'n drop for verification works fine, as long as you already
have the senders key in your keyring and you trust it, but the result
behaves like a picture).
GPA, in comparison, does not support drag 'n drop, so one has to fiddle
around with the file open dialogue, and for the same file that verifies fine
in Encryption Desktop GPA tells me the signature is “Bad”.

>
> 3. Reading through Gmain.
>
>    Web interface? News reader? In a mail client? RSS feed?

nntps://news.gmane.org (currently with an expired self-signed certificate)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (pretty crappy, but still one of the better tools I
know)

>
> 4. using elliptic curve based keys
>
>    Needs to use GnuPG 2.1.x.

That's why I am testing GnuPG 2.1.1-beta35 right now.
PowerArchiver Enryption Suite supports ECC, via Eldos's SecureBlackbox
library as far as i know, but the UI still needs work.

Just a side note: I heard somewhere that the Austrian health insurance cards
(ecard) utilises ECC somehow . I'll have to check this at some point.

Regards,
Hugo