How to improve our GUIs (was: We have GOT TO make things simpler)

john doe johndoe65534 at mail.com
Sat Oct 5 20:05:55 CEST 2019


On 10/5/2019 6:54 PM, Werner Koch via Gnupg-users wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Sep 2019 10:58, Roland Siemons said:
>
>> 4/ Here is my proposal:
>> 4.1/ Stimulate that people use a GUI like GPA or Kleopatra. Not Enigmail,
>
> Enigmail folks won't like that suggestion.  Users need to install a
> second tool which behaves different (because Enigmail implements parts
> of GnuPG on its own).
>
> I agree with you and, although I sometimes hack on GPA, I would suggest
> Kleopatra.  On Windows Kleopatra and the Explorer plugin do actually do
> what you suggest and we LOTS of folks using Gpg4win.  Be it for plain
> file encryption or for its Outlook plugin.
>
>> 4.2/ Ensure that, when generating a keypair, GnuPG creates one directory
>> "Secretkeys", and one directory "Publickeys". Make GnuPG to store the public
>> part and the secret part separately in those directories. If GnuPG needs also
>> keypairs in a single file, store that under Secretkeys.
>
> That are all internals of GnuPG (except for the revocations directory)
> and should not be touched by most users.  The problem is that there are
> so many howtos and tutorials floating around which suggest to modify
> this or that or to do that.  In most cases this is not appropriate.
> gpg --import and --export are the interfaces which users need to know
> about - iff they really want to use the gpg _tool_.  See your first point.
>
>> 4.3/ Get rid of the confusing menu/Exportkeys/ vs. menu/Exportsecretkey. etc.
>
> Exporting public keys is an important operation for everyone and thus it
> needs to be prominent.  Exporting secret keys should come with a strong
> warning or better be removed and replaced by a sync-with-other-device
> feature.
>
> If you have concrete suggestions for Kleopatra, I am sure Andre will
> listen to you.  For GPA it is unlikely that we put a lot work into it -
> it is these days mostly a test bench for my changes to GPGME.
>

Given that, wouldn't be better to remove GPA all together from Gpg4win?


As an aside, I don't use Cleopatra at all, is there anyway to install
Gpg4win without Cliopatra?

Inother words, how can I only install the command line version of GPG on
Windows.

--
John Doe



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