We have GOT TO make things simpler

[Robert J. Hansen]

> Not to rain your parade, but I follow the topic encryption since the mid '80s
> and can say nowadays that GnuPG has failed to become an email encryption
> product for the masses, which IIRC was the initial goal of Mr Zimmermann's PGP
> back in the early ninetees.

It was not to be an email encryption tool.  It was to be a *file*
encryption tool.

This is all that RFC1991 has to say about email:

"This radix-64 conversion ... is used to protect binary messages during
transmission over non-binary channels, such as Internet Email."

That's it.  The only other mention of "email" in the entire document is
to list email addresses for Derek Atkins, Bill Stallings, and Phil
Zimmermann.