Re: Feature request: Selective encryption

[John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com>]

Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:

> I do think this would be a useful feature.  Some properties I'd find useful:
>
> - Use symmetric encryption
>
> - Be able to recognize if an entry is encrypted
>
> - Leave the headline of the entry alone and only encrypt the text below it
> and the subtree, if present
>
> - Support something like a CRYPT tag, leading to automatic encryption when
> the file is saved, to make sure encrypted entries are never saved in clear
> text.
>
> - Use only a single password per file, so once one entry is decrypted,
>   others will open without an additional password prompt.
>
> Something like this.

Yes, this is just what I'm thinking too, though I'd like the option of binding
different CRYPT tags to different keys or passwords.  So, I could have
WORK_CRYPT, HOME_CRYPT, etc., and each would have its own separate protection.
This would allow multiple people to have their own private regions within the
same org-mode file.

allout.el goes a long way toward providing all of the above, I just wasn't
fond of the mechanism (I tried porting it straight to org-mode one day, then
stopped).  For one thing, I want to use my GnuPG public key for encryption,
not a symmetric cipher.  That needs to be configurable.

I should be able to create an external module for this that does not affect
org.el at all, but just adds keybindings to org-mode-map and after-save-hook.

John