- What Is PGP? GPG?
- Why Should You Care?
- Is GPG Hard to Use?
- Does It Work with Other Crypto Programs?
- Where Can You Find GPG?
- How Does It Work?
- How to Install It
- How to Use It
- Passphrase
- Generate Your Key
- Export Your Key
- Key Management Window
- Importing a Key via the Clipboard
- Importing a Key from the Key Server Network
- Open the GPG Text Editor
- Right-Click Menu
- File Encryption/Decryption
- Problems?
- Possible Legal Hazards
- Resources
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Open the GPG Text Editor
You use the text editor for signing / encrypting / verifying messages. Open it from the right-click menu > Open Editor (see Figure 14) or from the Key Management screen > File > Open Editor.
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Figure 14 Editor open and key list open
To sign a message, highlight the text in your mail client or text editor, cut the text to the Clipboard, and then paste it into the editor and push the Verify/Sign button. Choose the public key you want to use.
Fill in your passphrase correctly at the prompt (see Figure 15). You can also compose your message in the GPG text editor. Cut the signed message from the editor and paste it into the mail client or text editor. If you want to encrypt the signed message after signing it, push the Encrypt button and cut and paste the signed and encrypted message as above.
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Figure 15 Passphrase prompt
To decrypt or verify a message, copy the text to the Clipboard and push the Decrypt button if the text is encrypted, and fill in your passphrase at the prompt. The decrypted message will appear onscreen with the digital signature information if it was originally signed. To verify the signature, push the Sign/Verify button. A window will come up containing either "Good signature from" message (see Figure 16) or "Bad signature from" message (see Figure 17).
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Figure 16 Good signature
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Figure 17 Bad signature
The bad signature screen shows what happened when I altered a single character in the document previously verified in the good signature screen and tried to verify the corrupted document.
After this process is done, you can copy it to the Clipboard and paste it into a document created in another GUI application—or into your mail client if it supports this. You don’t have to save the decrypted message at all; you can open it whenever you need the data.
You should be able to cut/copy/ paste between the GPG text editor and any other GUI text application (that is, regular text editors or Linux mail clients plus unformatted ASCII text content from/to the majority of Linux GUI applications).