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Revision 256 - (show annotations)
Sat Aug 5 10:31:06 2006 UTC (18 years, 6 months ago) by twoaday
File size: 9784 byte(s)
1.0.0pre3 release.


1 WinPT - The Windows Privacy Tray
2 ================================
3
4
5 Note
6 -----
7
8 This is only a quick guide for WinPT. For the moment the program is its own
9 documentation. This is subject to change.
10
11
12 Bugs and Improvements
13 ---------------------
14
15 I have tried to thoroughly test this program, but if you've found a bug,
16 please send me a message with a full error description or go directly
17 to http://wald.intevation.org and use the WinPT bug tracking system.
18
19 Please include as much detail as possible including OS version, WinPT
20 version, and GPG version in use. Please summarize your gpg configuration
21 and describe any special programs or configurations on your machine.
22
23 I try to fix bugs as quickly as possible and will upload all updates to
24 http://www.winpt.org
25
26
27 Legacy Windows versions
28
29 I know a lot of people still user old versions of WinPT but it is very
30 hard to test the code on all these platforms and thus I decided to
31 obsolete the support for these OS versions: Win95, WinME/98. The code
32 works on 98/ME without known limitations but if you will encounter
33 a serious problem, I doubt I can fix it without having this OS and
34 this is the major problem!
35
36
37 What is WinPT?
38 --------------
39
40 WinPT is a front-end for the GNU Privacy Guard. It just provides
41 a convinient interface to GPG while GPG does the actual (cryptographic) work.
42
43 GnuPG was written by Werner Koch and is Free Software. GnuPG contains all
44 of the functions WinPT uses for data encrypting, e-signatures and
45 key management.
46
47 WinPT is a Windows utility that sits on the taskbar. In the Windows
48 Clipboard, you can encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify data. You can also
49 import and export keys to the Clipboard.
50
51 Practically, WinPT is a taskbar front-end for GnuPG. Without GnuPG, WinPT
52 wouldn't work! Currently not all GnuPG functions are supported. With
53 all its key edit functions and file operations, WinPT is more than just
54 an universal e-mail plugin. Together with the filemanager and the keymanager,
55 it's like a real graphical GPG user interface.
56
57
58 Install
59 -------
60
61 First you should install the GPG binary, version 1.4.x or later.
62 (If you want to use a directory other than the default you must modify
63 the preferences in the WinPT program at Preferences->GPG Preferences).
64
65 Next, download the WinPT binary package from the Internet. You can find the
66 latest WinPT version at http://www.winpt.org. Create a directory and
67 extract all WinPT files from the archive.
68
69
70 Keyserver Config File
71 ---------------------
72
73 Now the keyserver config is read dynamically. That means there is a file
74 which WinPT reads the keyserver from. The name of this file MUST be
75 "keyserver.conf". I added a sample config file with the most common
76 keyservers. Of course it's possible to add own entries. Take a look
77 at the hints inside the file how to format the entries. If there no file,
78 the format can be described like this: 'DNS-Name=IP-Address'. Each line
79 of the file contains such an entry.
80 But it is recommend that you modify the file directly with the keyserver
81 dialog in WinPT to keep this file consistent.
82
83
84 Verify the Packet Signature
85 ---------------------------
86
87 To verify that the source (or the binary) wasn't changed, you should
88 verify the package signature with GnuPG. For the process you will need
89 my OpenPGP public key. If you don't have it, please take a look at
90 http://www.winpt.org/twoaday.asc
91
92 # gpg --verify winpt-x.x.x-exe.zip.asc
93 # gpg --verify winpt-x.x.x-src.zip.asc
94
95 gpg should output that the signature was correct and that the signature
96 was created by me.
97
98 My key ID is 0xBF3DF9B4: 'Timo Schulz <[email protected]>' or
99 0x27F36D14: 'Timo Schulz (Laptop Key) <[email protected]>
100
101
102 Native Language Support (NLS)
103 -----------------------------
104
105 As a new feature WinPT now can handle multiple languages. To activate this
106 do the following:
107
108 - Create a directory where you want to store the locale files
109 (the .mo files)
110
111 - Rename your favourite .mo file to winpt.mo
112
113 - Put all .mo files into this directory
114 (For example the gnupg.mo and the winpt.mo)
115
116 - Start WinPT and choose the menu entry 'Preferences->GPG Prefs'.
117 Set your locale directory to the directory containing winpt.mo.
118
119 - Now WinPT runs in the language you have selected.
120
121 For the moment, WinPT supports these languages:
122
123 * German winpt-de.mo
124 * Japanese winpt-jp.mo
125
126 If you are interested in translating WinPT in your native language, please
127 let me know :-). It's not much work and you do NOT need to be a developer!
128
129
130 Other Documentation
131 -------------------
132
133 For those who are inexperienced with GnuPG it makes sense to download the
134 GnuPG guide or a HOWTO. There are many sites for this, but you can start
135 with the GnuPG site. This site is available in many languages. I prefer
136 the GNU Privacy Handbook. It contains background information that makes
137 working with GnuPG more effective.
138
139 http://www.gnupg.org
140
141 General questions (look first at the topic point), can be sent to one of the
142 mailing lists. All GnuPG lists are in English.
143
144 GPG user list [email protected]
145 GPG developer list [email protected]
146
147 At the moment the only available documentation for WinPT is this file. In
148 future releases I will include HTML documentation.
149
150
151 Mailing Lists
152 -------------
153
154 If you want to get the latest information, reports, or discussions about
155 WinPT you can subscribe to one of the WinPT mailing lists. There is a list
156 for users and one for developers. All lists are in English! To subscribe
157 visit http://wald.intevation.org and go to the WinPT project site.
158
159 Please, before you send a message to the list take a look at the FAQ,
160 the README files and the list archives. It's possible that your question
161 is already answered there!
162
163
164 Hotkey for Common Commands
165 --------------------------
166
167 WinPT supports shortcuts, or 'Hotkeys', for the main gpg commands. These
168 keys are registered system wide, so you can use them from any window. If you
169 have some problems with this keys, you can change the hotkeys in the
170 preferences dialog.
171
172 Encrypt Clipboard CTRL+ALT+e
173 Sign & Encrypt CTRL+ALT+b
174 Decrypt/verify Clipboard CTRL+ALT+d
175 Sign Clipboard CTRL+ALT+s
176 Export Clipboard CTRL+ALT+x
177 Import Clipboard CTRL+ALT+i
178
179 In case of an error, it's possible that another program already uses
180 some of the hotkeys. WinPT will tell you which hotkey wasn't installed properly
181 so it's easier to figure out which hotkey caused the problem.
182
183
184 Current Window Support
185 ----------------------
186
187 WinPT allows you to use the main operations (sign and encrypt)
188 within the current window. This only works if the current window contains
189 text. For example, a mailer window with the message, a text editor or a
190 simple edit field. There are some kind of windows that are NOT
191 supported.
192
193 The easiest way to access this feature is using the hotkeys. Note: if
194 you use this feature the text will automatically be cut, encrypted
195 and pasted again in the window. You don't need to do anything manually.
196
197 Encrypt current window ALT+SHIFT+e
198 Decrypt/verify current window ALT+SHIFT+d
199 Sign current window ALT+SHIFT+s
200
201 Alternately you can use the WinPT menu for the current window support.
202 Please note, that the mode doesn't work very well if you use the menu
203 entry. I recommend to use it with the hotkeys until I fix this problem.
204
205
206 Word Wrapping
207 -------------
208
209 As a new feature, WinPT can wrap lines at a specific column. You can set
210 the value for this feature in the preferences dialog. If you don't want
211 to use this feature, you only need to set the value to "0".
212
213
214 Default keyid for Signing
215 -------------------------
216
217 There are two ways to set the default keyid. The best solution is to
218 set the "default-key" entry in the GPG options file.
219 The second solution is that you use the Key Manager to set a default
220 key. If no default key was found, WinPT uses the first useable key in
221 the secret key cache.
222
223
224 File Manager
225 ------------
226
227 The filemanager is used to perform GPG operations on files. In further releases
228 I'll add more commands. Currently, encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify
229 is available. To add a file to the list element, you can use drag & drop
230 or use the 'Open' menu entry, like Windows Explorer.
231
232 Please note that this code is under heavy development, but is should be
233 fairly stable. It possible that some parts don't work as expected, but
234 feel free to mail me about any bugs!
235
236
237 Proxy Support
238 --------------
239
240 If you are not able to connect directly to the internet, you can
241 use the proxy settings. To enable proxy support, you need to start
242 the keyserver dialog and use the "change" button to set a proxy.
243 Now the keyserver code uses the proxy instead of the direct connection.
244
245 If your proxy needs some kind of authentification, you can use
246 "proxy_user" and "proxy_pass". Then for each request the data
247 is used. The code was tested with some HTTP/WWW proxies but it's
248 also possible that it does *not* work with some proxies! Please tell
249 me if you've problems with your proxy server.
250
251
252 Debug Mode
253 ----------
254
255 To make the detection of bugs and programming mistakes easier, WinPT
256 contains a built-in debug mode.
257
258 It can be activated with the '--enable-debug'
259 switch on the command line. Then the WinPT output is more verbose and all
260 steps are logged a in a file with the name "gpgme.dbg". This file is stored
261 in the current directory and ONLY contains GPG related information. If you
262 think it is a WinPT problem, you can find a debug file in c:\windows\temp.
263 The name of this file is "winpt.log". It's possible that this file is very
264 large, so do NOT forget to compress it.
265
266 After an error has occured, it would be very useful to send this file to me.
267 Which file you'll send depends on the occured error. Don't use the debug
268 mode for your usual work; it slows down both GPG and WinPT.

[email protected]
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