bug#9112: 24.0.50; EasyPG - creating new gpg-encrypted files fails

["Roland Winkler" <winkler@gnu.org>]

On Mon Aug 1 2011 Daiki Ueno wrote:
> "Roland Winkler" <winkler@gnu.org> writes:
> > With Emacs 23 I could create new gpg-encrypted files by simply
> > giving the file name the extension .gpg. Then emacs would ask me
> > which public keys to use for encryption.
> 
> The default value of epa-file-select-keys has changed from nil to
> 'silent in Emacs 24, which means symmetric encryption is now default.
> You could set the variable to nil for the compatible behavior.  

I see. Just curious: what was the reason for this change? I browsed
emacs-devel and bug-gnu-emacs (and etc/NEWS), but I could not find
anything.

> > Now emacs will pop up a pinentry window which doesn't do anything
> > useful. Whatever I enter there results in the error message
> >
> >  Opening output file: Encrypt failed: ((exit))
> 
> However, this sounds strange. Do you mean that you are not able to
> encrypt a file even with symmetric encryption?

Oh, now I see: the pinentry window completely confused me as it was
not particularly verbose concerning the context of its appearence.
It simply asked "Enter passphrase", but it did not say how the
passphrase would be used. -- This is something that has annoyed me
various times, but it is really not (not only) an emacs issue, but
it applies also to gpg.

...Well, it would be nice if either gpg or emacs could tell the user
that the file the user wants to save is just about to go through
symmetric encryption (and not any other encryption mechanism the
user might hope for). Otherwise, any misunderstanding concerning the
encryption mechanism could imply that a file is essentially lost
after saving.

Roland