[Techtalk] Re: mutt/pgp: decryption

[Raven Alder]

Heya --

Quoth Katie Bechtold (Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 08:56:21AM -0500):
> I'm attempting to figure out how to exchange encrypted messages
> using GnuPG and Mutt.  I've read the Mutt-i, GnuPG and PGP Howto at
> tldp.org and done some googling, but it's still unclear to me how to
> get Mutt to automatically decrypt encrypted messages (or even how to
> use some key combination in Mutt to decrypt encrypted messages). 

	There are two styles of PGP-encrypted messages.  One is
basically just encrypted content in a normal e-mail plain text message,
the other sets some flags in the headers (application-type mime or some
such is set) and encrypts the actual message itself.

	Mutt/GPG does not by default check for the old style
(check-traditional-pgp is a good phrase to google on) of encrypted
messages.  It does see messages encrypted with the new style -- I'll
send you one offlist and you can see it.

	Under some versions of Mutt, Esc-Shift-p (Esc-P) will cause Mutt
to manually check a message for PGP/GPG content.  Try that and see if it
works with your setup.

http://www.mutt.org/doc/PGP-Notes.txt
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mutt-users/message/34291

> Is Mutt *supposed* to be able to automatically decrypt messages? 

	Yep, but you have to set some weird thing with the
display_filter.  References online are scanty at best (IME), and I must
admit to my shame that I'm still Esc-P-ing on the rare occasions when
someone sends me an old-style PGP message.  It's not been sufficiently
aggravating for me to have made the time to read all the docs and figure
out display_filters.  Let me know if you do figure it out, and I'll let
you know if I get to it first.  (Or perhaps someone else here is already
display_filter savvy.)

Cheers,
Raven

"The important thing was not the battle, but what he did afterwards.  
 You've only seen him win.  You don't know a man until you see him lose."
  -- Margaret George, regarding Marc Antony