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Tue Jul 11 08:55:57 2006 UTC (18 years, 7 months ago) by twoaday
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1 WinPT - The Windows Privacy Tray
2
3
4 Note
5 -----
6
7 This is only a quick guide for WinPT. For the moment the program is its own
8 documentation. This is subject to change.
9
10
11 Bugs and Improvements
12 ---------------------
13
14 I have tried to thoroughly test this program, but if you've found a bug,
15 please send me a message with a full error description or go directly
16 to http://wald.intevation.org and use the WinPT bug tracking system.
17
18 Please include as much detail as possible including OS version, WinPT
19 version, and GPG version in use. Please summarize your gpg configuration
20 and describe any special programs or configurations on your machine.
21
22 I try to fix bugs as quickly as possible and will upload all updates to
23 http://www.winpt.org
24
25
26 Legacy Windows versions
27
28 I know a lot of people still user old versions of WinPT but it is very
29 hard to test the code on all these platforms and thus I decided to
30 obsolete the support for these OS versions: Win95, WinME/98. The code
31 works on 98/ME without known limitations but if you will encounter
32 a serious problem, I doubt I can fix it without having this OS and
33 this is the major problem!
34
35
36 What is WinPT?
37 --------------
38
39 WinPT is a front-end for the GNU Privacy Guard. It just provides
40 a convinient interface to GPG while GPG does the actual (cryptographic) work.
41
42 GnuPG was written by Werner Koch and is Free Software. GnuPG contains all
43 of the functions WinPT uses for data encrypting, e-signatures and
44 key management.
45
46 WinPT is a Windows utility that sits on the taskbar. In the Windows
47 Clipboard, you can encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify data. You can also
48 import and export keys to the Clipboard.
49
50 Practically, WinPT is a taskbar front-end for GnuPG. Without GnuPG, WinPT
51 wouldn't work! Currently not all GnuPG functions are supported. With
52 all its key edit functions and file operations, WinPT is more than just
53 an universal e-mail plugin. Together with the filemanager and the keymanager,
54 it's like a real graphical GPG user interface.
55
56
57 Install
58 -------
59
60 First you should install the GPG binary, version 1.4.x or later.
61 (If you want to use a directory other than the default you must modify
62 the preferences in the WinPT program at Preferences->GPG Preferences).
63
64 Next, download the WinPT binary package from the Internet. You can find the
65 latest WinPT version at http://www.winpt.org. Create a directory and
66 extract all WinPT files from the archive.
67
68
69 Keyserver Config File
70 ---------------------
71
72 Now the keyserver config is read dynamically. That means there is a file
73 which WinPT reads the keyserver from. The name of this file MUST be
74 "keyserver.conf". I added a sample config file with the most common
75 keyservers. Of course it's possible to add own entries. Take a look
76 at the hints inside the file how to format the entries. If there no file,
77 the format can be described like this: 'DNS-Name=IP-Address'. Each line
78 of the file contains such an entry.
79 But it is recommend that you modify the file directly with the keyserver
80 dialog in WinPT to keep this file consistent.
81
82
83 Verify the Packet Signature
84 ---------------------------
85
86 To verify that the source (or the binary) wasn't changed, you should
87 verify the package signature with GnuPG. For the process you will need
88 my OpenPGP public key. If you don't have it, please take a look at
89 http://www.winpt.org/twoaday.asc
90
91 # gpg --verify winpt-x.x.x-exe.zip.asc
92 # gpg --verify winpt-x.x.x-src.zip.asc
93
94 gpg should output that the signature was correct and that the signature
95 was created by me.
96
97 My key ID is 0xBF3DF9B4: 'Timo Schulz <[email protected]>' or
98 0x27F36D14: 'Timo Schulz (Laptop Key) <[email protected]>
99
100
101 Native Language Support (NLS)
102 -----------------------------
103
104 As a new feature WinPT now can handle multiple languages. To activate this
105 do the following:
106
107 - Create a directory where you want to store the locale files
108 (the .mo files)
109
110 - Rename your favourite .mo file to winpt.mo
111
112 - Put all .mo files into this directory
113 (For example the gnupg.mo and the winpt.mo)
114
115 - Start WinPT and choose the menu entry 'Preferences->GPG Prefs'.
116 Set your locale directory to the directory containing winpt.mo.
117
118 - Now WinPT runs in the language you have selected.
119
120 For the moment, WinPT supports these languages:
121
122 * German winpt-de.mo
123 * Japanese winpt-jp.mo
124
125 If you are interested in translating WinPT in your native language, please
126 let me know :-). It's not much work and you do NOT need to be a developer!
127
128
129 Other Documentation
130 -------------------
131
132 For those who are inexperienced with GnuPG it makes sense to download the
133 GnuPG guide or a HOWTO. There are many sites for this, but you can start
134 with the GnuPG site. This site is available in many languages. I prefer
135 the GNU Privacy Handbook. It contains background information that makes
136 working with GnuPG more effective.
137
138 http://www.gnupg.org
139
140 General questions (look first at the topic point), can be sent to one of the
141 mailing lists. All GnuPG lists are in English.
142
143 GPG user list [email protected]
144 GPG developer list [email protected]
145
146 At the moment the only available documentation for WinPT is this file. In
147 future releases I will include HTML documentation.
148
149
150 Mailing Lists
151 -------------
152
153 If you want to get the latest information, reports, or discussions about
154 WinPT you can subscribe to one of the WinPT mailing lists. There is a list
155 for users and one for developers. All lists are in English! To subscribe
156 visit http://wald.intevation.org and go to the WinPT project site.
157
158 Please, before you send a message to the list take a look at the FAQ,
159 the README files and the list archives. It's possible that your question
160 is already answered there!
161
162
163 Hotkey for Common Commands
164 --------------------------
165
166 WinPT supports shortcuts, or 'Hotkeys', for the main gpg commands. These
167 keys are registered system wide, so you can use them from any window. If you
168 have some problems with this keys, you can change the hotkeys in the
169 preferences dialog.
170
171 Encrypt Clipboard CTRL+ALT+e
172 Sign & Encrypt CTRL+ALT+b
173 Decrypt/verify Clipboard CTRL+ALT+d
174 Sign Clipboard CTRL+ALT+s
175 Export Clipboard CTRL+ALT+x
176 Import Clipboard CTRL+ALT+i
177
178 In case of an error, it's possible that another program already uses
179 some of the hotkeys. WinPT will tell you which hotkey wasn't installed properly
180 so it's easier to figure out which hotkey caused the problem.
181
182
183 Current Window Support
184 ----------------------
185
186 WinPT allows you to use the main operations (sign and encrypt)
187 within the current window. This only works if the current window contains
188 text. For example, a mailer window with the message, a text editor or a
189 simple edit field. There are some kind of windows that are NOT
190 supported.
191
192 The easiest way to access this feature is using the hotkeys. Note: if
193 you use this feature the text will automatically be cut, encrypted
194 and pasted again in the window. You don't need to do anything manually.
195
196 Encrypt current window ALT+SHIFT+e
197 Decrypt/verify current window ALT+SHIFT+d
198 Sign current window ALT+SHIFT+s
199
200 Alternately you can use the WinPT menu for the current window support.
201 Please note, that the mode doesn't work very well if you use the menu
202 entry. I recommend to use it with the hotkeys until I fix this problem.
203
204
205 Word Wrapping
206 -------------
207
208 As a new feature, WinPT can wrap lines at a specific column. You can set
209 the value for this feature in the preferences dialog. If you don't want
210 to use this feature, you only need to set the value to "0".
211
212
213 Default keyid for Signing
214 -------------------------
215
216 There are two ways to set the default keyid. The best solution is to
217 set the "default-key" entry in the GPG options file.
218 The second solution is that you use the Key Manager to set a default
219 key. If no default key was found, WinPT uses the first useable key in
220 the secret key cache.
221
222
223 File Manager
224 ------------
225
226 The filemanager is used to perform GPG operations on files. In further releases
227 I'll add more commands. Currently, encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify
228 is available. To add a file to the list element, you can use drag & drop
229 or use the 'Open' menu entry, like Windows Explorer.
230
231 Please note that this code is under heavy development, but is should be
232 fairly stable. It possible that some parts don't work as expected, but
233 feel free to mail me about any bugs!
234
235
236 Proxy Support
237 --------------
238
239 If you are not able to connect directly to the internet, you can
240 use the proxy settings. To enable proxy support, you need to start
241 the keyserver dialog and use the "change" button to set a proxy.
242 Now the keyserver code uses the proxy instead of the direct connection.
243
244 If your proxy needs some kind of authentification, you can use
245 "proxy_user" and "proxy_pass". Then for each request the data
246 is used. The code was tested with some HTTP/WWW proxies but it's
247 also possible that it does *not* work with some proxies! Please tell
248 me if you've problems with your proxy server.
249
250
251 Debug Mode
252 ----------
253
254 To make the detection of bugs and programming mistakes easier, WinPT
255 contains a built-in debug mode.
256
257 It can be activated with the '--enable-debug'
258 switch on the command line. Then the WinPT output is more verbose and all
259 steps are logged a in a file with the name "gpgme.dbg". This file is stored
260 in the current directory and ONLY contains GPG related information. If you
261 think it is a WinPT problem, you can find a debug file in c:\windows\temp.
262 The name of this file is "winpt.log". It's possible that this file is very
263 large, so do NOT forget to compress it.
264
265 After an error has occured, it would be very useful to send this file to me.
266 Which file you'll send depends on the occured error. Don't use the debug
267 mode for your usual work; it slows down both GPG and WinPT.

[email protected]
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