[SOLVED] Why install OpenPGP for a text-editor? GnuPG docs?

[GetLinux]

Question 1: What in the world does this paragraph mean???
re: this GnuPG Doc

If you didn't change the installation directory when you did ./configure the usr/local/share/gnupg/ will be the installation directory. You can find this directory in the file options.skel. (ok so far) When you change this options.skel. (Yes? When I change it (and why would I), then what? Sentence not finished!) If you copy this to ~/.gnupg/options the appropriate adjustments will be used as standard. (When I copy WHAT to ~/.gnupg/options?) Copying should occur automatically when creating ~/.gnupg/. All possible options are well documented and explaining them here would not be useful.

You can run GnuPG as suid root. So the program runs with all the rights the superuser has. By doing this you exclude the possibility that certain parts of the program are stored externally and then could be read by anyone. (So far writer is saying running it as suid is safer) It is not feasible for me to judge on the value of this risk. (Why is stopping other people from reading parts of the program a risk? Shouldn't that make it safer? Ok, I can guess the person meant to write "include", not "exclude"...but hey, this is a doc on a security program, it's kind of important to get it right.) But running the program as suid root one should be alert to the danger of Trojan horses. Since a Trojan horse running as superuser can damage an entire system. If for this reason (or any other reason) you choose not run GnuPG as root you can switch off the warning by setting no-secmem-warning in ~/.gnupg/options.

Why install OpenPGP for a text-editor?

The reason I am even reading this at all is because I want to use Quanta, and it requires "OpenPGP" in order to be able to setup browser previews. That seems pretty silly. Why do they require security to preview webpages in an editor? You only use it to preview your own pages on your own computer, that you are editing. And it's not like you need encryption to be able to view files "live" on the Internet in your browser, which is certainly more dangerous. Is it a big hassle to install and use encryption if you've never done it before, and is the effort worth it just to get a browser preview of pages I am working on?
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[didymos]

I don't see it listed in the dependencies of quanta or the reverse dependencies of gnupg, so it may be getting pulled in due to a global use flag, probably "crypt", as libxslt honors it (among numerous other packages).

AFAIK, the only thing quanta uses GPG/PGP for is submitting resources to the main quanta reposistory.
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Thomas S. Howard

[GetLinux]

It's not a dependency of Quanta, per se, (which is why it didn't get pulled in on emerge) but Quanta says it is needed for that feature. This is the alert that pops up when I start Quanta:

[didymos]

It should emerge easily. Right now, though, I'm avoiding the 1.9xxx versions. They install in a slot, but I've had nothing but trouble with them, so I'm masking 1.9 and above so I can use the other testing versions. If all you want it for is to get quanta going, though, just emerge the stable version. I'm guessing Quanta is requiring it for some option in preview mode, and should be happy as long as there's a gnupg binary lurking on the system.

What an annoyance. You shouldn't need it, but I guess the authors think otherwise.
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Thomas S. Howard

[GetLinux]

Thanks. I guess either Quanta version you have didn't need this for preview...or like you said, it just needs those libs on the system, which would explain why you weren't aware of this, since you already have that on your system.
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