Text (non-binary) keyring format

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Alejandro Colomar via Gnupg-users wrote in
 <eiecwibyxdcdzxnc5ywsxa35akdcppomgzkelx5ipyom2iesed at wsjm2kgisgbt>:
 |I have my ~/.gnupg keyring under git source control, which helps
 |creating and updating backups, and also having a history of the changes.
 |I find that having the contents in binary format is odd, and think it
 |would be much better if it was all stored in text files.  I would be
 |able to understand the diffs, and if a failure happens before a backup,
 |I'd probably be able to at least diff(1) the contents of the keyring and
 |recover something.

I do that too.  (In fact i even have three different PGP
directories, ehem, all 1.4 still, i am sorry, but these are
pgp-nosecrets.git (no secring, only public key), pgp.git
(mutilated private key, for creating signatures, but which cannot
be exported or whatever, and has its own specific password; thanks
again for this great idea and fantastic possibility!), and
~/sic/pgp.git (there it is).)

 |Would you consider developing a new format for the keyring, where stuff
 |is divided in small text files, just like most Unix stuff?

And how about using a LMDB database.
Seriously, i also hate it, but even more seriously, how about
exporting at times stuff via "--list-keys/--list-sigs --with-
colons --verbose", and then further process the output if you
want?  Ie hop from ^pub to ^pub, use "--list-key ID" and then even
"--armor --export ID".

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)