Re: [Pan-users] GPG sign outgoing posts.

[Duncan]

AnthonyL posted on Fri, 29 May 2015 05:38:04 +0000 as excerpted:

> Does pan have this functionality?
> 
> My version Sexual Chocolate (GIT bf56508 git://git.gnome.org/pan2;
> amd64-portbld-freebsd10.1) of Pan 0.139 doesn't seem to have it.

Heinrich (current pan co-lead dev, does most of the actual coding) did 
some work on gpg signatures and he'd be the one that could answer the 
question in detail.  However, AFAIK from the "heavily involved non-dev 
user" level...

Pan's support is AFAIK mostly on the receiving side; setup properly, it 
should be able to verify sigs.  FWIW, I think I have binary-side setup 
for it, but don't know where/how to feed keys to pan to verify, so all 
I've ever seen is the gpg-signature-unverified indicator, when there's a 
gpg-sig available that in theory I could verify if pan could find the 
associated public key to verify with.

On the send side, again AFAIK, you'd point pan's "external editor" 
function at a script that would either sign the message directly, or 
multiplex such that you could run a real editor or do the signing.

Note that some years ago now, before pan got the C++ rewrite and *LONG* 
before it got file attachment posting functionality, I setup a 
multiplexer "editor" of this type, using bash scripts and kdialog to 
popup X/KDE-based dialogs.  In my case, however, the multiplexer was for 
encoding and attaching files and possibly external-editing, not gpg-
signing.  I actually still use it occasionally, mostly in "identity" mode 
to "attach" text files as simply part of the normal message body since 
pan now has yEnc-based binary attachment, tho it's also possible to UUE 
encode the attachment and I'll do that occasionally too, for posting 
binaries to mailing lists such as this one, using pan and gmane's 
list2news and back service, since mail clients seldom handle pan's native 
yEnc-based binary attachments.

FWIW I posted that script here a few times, and had it up as one of the 
few files on my (extremely rudimentary) website, too, but haven't posted 
it since pan got native yenc attachment posting...  

Meanwhile, I got the original idea for that attachment multiplexer from 
someone who mentioned using the external-editor functionality to trigger 
his own gpg-signing script.  So it's certainly possible, tho that was 
years ago and I neither remember who it was, nor consider it very likely 
they're still on the list.  If they are, of course, getting a copy of 
that script from them would be the easiest route.

Alternatively, you can either hack up your own from start to finish, or 
ask me to post my attachment multiplexer script, cutting out my 
attachment innards and replacing them with your gpg-signing innards, or 
simply extending mine so the script does both.  If you're just looking 
for a quick non-GUI gpg-signing script hack and don't use the external 
editor functionality for anything else, it'd probably be faster to just 
hack your own.  OTOH, if you're looking for a fancier GUI based script 
using kdialog/zenity/xdialog for the GUI, with the UI allowing 
multiplexing to a real external editor in place of the gpg-signer, or if 
you want to simply extend my encoding and attaching script with signing 
functionality, having me post what I already use and going from there may 
well be easier.

One more note on implementation:  I use kdialog and bash here, so there 
may be a few bashisms/kdialogisms in my solution.  However, at least back 
a few years ago when I posted it, feedback from a couple others who found 
it handy, said it worked either as-is or with very few changes with other 
shell-compatible interpreters and with zenity.  But YMMV, as they say...

Of course if you're a tk/tcl/python/perl/ruby hacker, or better yet, can 
do your own C/C++ or similar coding, you can do better than my kdialog 
and bash solution.  But those are the tools I know how to use, so that's 
what I used...


-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman