Possible to encrypt a message using ASCII armor

Hi,
I am using the latest version 3.0.1 on Windows 8. I have a simple string of text I would like to encrypt, but I want to be able to print the encrypted file. I don’t see the option in the Sign/Encrypt box to output in ASCII armor. Is this possible in Kleopatra? Thanks

Hey Scott,

Just open op your editor and copy the text you want to encrypt.

Open up Kleopatra and select the Clipboard option on the right hand side in the Option-Bar.

Select the “encrypt…” option and add some recipients.

As soon as the process is finished, you’ll have the encrypted text in your clipboard. So you can paste it back everywhere you want.

Best Wishes,
Jochen

The ASCII Armor option that was formerly in the File encrypt dialog is now a general setting. You can find it in Kleopatra preferences → Crypto Operations: Create signed or encrypted files as text files.

Would it be possible to add that option back in the dialog or maybe an additional option to use ASCII armor when signing? I generally use the ASCII armor option on signing files but will use the non-ascii armor method when encrypting binary data.

Hi Paul,
can you tell us more about your use-case?

Files could be binary data or text or something else.

If we had a detection if the file is probably text (e.g. only ascii or utf-8 or utf-16 chars)
we could use armor when doing the text files, but what for?
Both binary and base64 encoded files will not be directly readable.

Best,
Bernhard

Sure, a common thing we do here at my job is review log files and then sign them to satisfy our policy’s need to confirm that we did in fact review them. Sometimes we also have need to encrypt the log files as well. But the reason for the ASCII armor is that we use mail and a ticket system to keep track of these; our security on our mail server allows us to transport text files easier than binary. It also helps with our multi-platform environment (Our users are Windows, Mac and Linux). Our users also find it easier in our system to perform copy and paste functions of code snippets or other ascii items over an SSH window.

Hi Paul,
thanks for describing your use case in more detail.

How I understand it: Would you’ll be fine if you switch over to generally use armored results then? It would relieve you from making a choice each time and be good enough.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

Well I forgot the binary case didn’t I. We do receive and send binary data ranging anywhere from a few MB to several GB. These are generally encrypted and sent snail mail or through other sanctioned file transfer system. Again its our policy that requires us to encrypt using PGP/GPG. Giving the size increase when it comes to binary, we prefer to keep it binary as we don’t have to grab double layer DVDs or larger media.

Is there no easy way to add an option to either show advance options on the sign/encrypt dialog or perhaps add an shell ex and file menu option to encrypt/sign (ASCII Mode)?

Paul,
again thanks for describing your use-case.

From your question, I’ll take it that if you had a configuration option somewhere that would allow an option to appear that would be acceptable for you. This way we wouln’t need to offer this option to all people.

Also I’m thinking about considering a behaviour like:
If it is well over 20 Mebibyte, do binary, otherwise do armor.

Would that help as well?
Bernhard