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I consider myself pretty comfortable with command lines, given that I more or less live in a terminal window for work purposes. GPG's particular command-line i

I consider myself pretty comfortable with command lines, given that I more or less live in a terminal window for work purposes. GPG's particular command-line interface is still a counterintuitive mishmash of stuff that essentially boils down to having to look up a tutorial every single time I want to do anything related to key management. I've actually been known to ask people to email me just so I can fire up a mail client with Enigmail and have it auto-fetch the key into my keyring and set trust on it through their interface. Which, while not great, is light-years better than GPG's native key-editing interface.

pdkl95 11y ago
Is the command line interface that is confusing? Or is it that the crypto jargon is confusing? I suspect the latter, maybe? Regardless, just like any feature-rich technical library, this is easily solved by a front-end. For example, > Enigmail ...is an outstanding front end for many common uses. Unfortunately, the idea of writing a better UI front end for GPG - possibly many, specialized for various tasks - just like we've done for every other complicated piece of technology, it seems like everyone says "it's too complicated" and writes off GPG entirely. > native key-editing interface While I agree that interface is not the best (use Enigmail), I don't necessarily find it hard. It's very unrefined, tedious, and can be very annoying.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  It's very unrefined, tedious, and can be very annoying. This is the same as saying "hard".
- lmm 11y ago
  > Regardless, just like any feature-rich technical library, this is easily solved by a front-end. Note that GPG is not a technical library. The primary "library" for using GPG consists of some functions that system() out to GPG and pipe data back and forth. I think this is a big impediment to getting better frontends (particularly on platforms other than linuxlike desktops).

pdkl95 11y ago

Is the command line interface that is confusing? Or is it that the crypto jargon is confusing? I suspect the latter, maybe? Regardless, just like any feature-rich technical library, this is easily solved by a front-end. For example, > Enigmail ...is an outstanding front end for many common uses. Unfortunately, the idea of writing a better UI front end for GPG - possibly many, specialized for various tasks - just like we've done for every other complicated piece of technology, it seems like everyone says "it's too complicated" and writes off GPG entirely. > native key-editing interface While I agree that interface is not the best (use Enigmail), I don't necessarily find it hard. It's very unrefined, tedious, and can be very annoying.

ubernostrum 11y ago
It's very unrefined, tedious, and can be very annoying. This is the same as saying "hard".
lmm 11y ago
> Regardless, just like any feature-rich technical library, this is easily solved by a front-end. Note that GPG is not a technical library. The primary "library" for using GPG consists of some functions that system() out to GPG and pipe data back and forth. I think this is a big impediment to getting better frontends (particularly on platforms other than linuxlike desktops).