WinPT - The Windows Privacy Tray ================================= Bugs and Improvements --------------------- Because of the long phase of inactivity, it is very likely that the current code has problems with a recent GnuPG and Windows version. You can find an (outdated) tracker at . Please include as much detail as possible including OS version, WinPT version, and GPG version in use. Please also summarize your gpg configuration and describe any special programs or configurations on your machine. Update and new releases will be available at: Legacy Windows versions ----------------------- WinPT requires at least Windows XP or higher. Currently, the support for Windows 7 is limited and we do not give any support for Vista. What is WinPT? -------------- WinPT is a front-end for the GNU Privacy Guard. It just provides a convinient interface to GPG while GPG does the actual (cryptographic) work. GnuPG was written by Werner Koch and is Free Software. GnuPG contains all of the functions WinPT uses for data encrypting, e-signatures and key management. WinPT is a Windows utility that sits on the taskbar. In the Windows Clipboard, you can encrypt, sign, decrypt and verify data. You can also import and export keys to the Clipboard. Practically, WinPT is a taskbar front-end for GnuPG. Without GnuPG, WinPT wouldn't work! Currently not all GnuPG functions are supported. With all its key edit functions and file operations, WinPT is more than just an universal e-mail plugin. Together with the filemanager and the keymanager, it's like a real graphical GPG user interface. Install ------- First you should install the GPG binary, version 1.4.11 or later. (If you want to use a directory other than the default you must modify the preferences in the WinPT program at Preferences->GPG Preferences). Next, download the WinPT binary package from the Internet. You can find the latest WinPT version at http://wald.intevation.org/projects/winpt. Create a directory and extract all WinPT files from the archive. Keyserver Config File --------------------- Now the keyserver config is read dynamically. That means there is a file which WinPT reads the keyserver from. The name of this file MUST be "keyserver.conf". I added a sample config file with the most common keyservers. Of course it's possible to add own entries. Take a look at the hints inside the file how to format the entries. If there no file, the format can be described like this: 'DNS-Name=IP-Address'. Each line of the file contains such an entry. But it is recommend that you modify the file directly with the keyserver dialog in WinPT to keep this file consistent. Verify the Packet Signature --------------------------- To verify that the source (or the binary) wasn't changed, you should verify the package signature with GnuPG. For the process you will need my OpenPGP public key. If you don't have it, please take a look at http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~twoaday/twoaday.asc or fetch it via a keyserver (I suggest subkeys.pgp.net). # gpg --verify winpt-x.x.x-exe.zip.asc # gpg --verify winpt-x.x.x-src.zip.asc gpg should output that the signature was correct and that the signature was created by me. My key ID is 0xBF3DF9B4: 'Timo Schulz ' or 0x27F36D14: 'Timo Schulz (Laptop Key) Native Language Support (NLS) ----------------------------- As a new feature WinPT now can handle multiple languages. To activate this do the following: - Create a directory where you want to store the locale files (the .mo files) - Rename your favourite .mo file to winpt.mo - Put all .mo files into this directory (For example the gnupg.mo and the winpt.mo) - Start WinPT and choose the menu entry 'Preferences->GPG Prefs'. Set your locale directory to the directory containing winpt.mo. - Now WinPT runs in the language you have selected. For an overview what languages are supported take a look at Po/LINGUAS. It contains all actively maintained languages. If you are interested in translating WinPT in your native language, please let me know :-). It's not much work and you do NOT need to be a developer! Other Documentation ------------------- For those who are inexperienced with GnuPG it makes sense to download the GnuPG guide or a HOWTO. There are many sites for this, but you can start with the GnuPG site. This site is available in many languages. I prefer the GNU Privacy Handbook. It contains background information that makes working with GnuPG more effective. http://www.gnupg.org General questions (look first at the topic point), can be sent to one of the mailing lists. GPG user list gnupg-users@gnupg.org GPG developer list gnupg-devel@gnupg.org At the moment the only available documentation for WinPT is this file. In future releases I will include HTML documentation. Mailing Lists ------------- If you want to get the latest information, reports, or discussions about WinPT you can subscribe to one of the WinPT mailing lists. There is a list for users and one for developers. All lists are in English! To subscribe visit http://wald.intevation.org and go to the WinPT project site. Please, before you send a message to the list take a look at the FAQ, the README files and the list archives. It's possible that your question is already answered there! Hotkey for Common Commands -------------------------- WinPT supports shortcuts, or 'Hotkeys', for the main gpg commands. These keys are registered system wide, so you can use them from any window. If you have some problems with this keys, you can change the hotkeys in the preferences dialog. Encrypt Clipboard CTRL+ALT+e Sign & Encrypt CTRL+ALT+b Decrypt/verify Clipboard CTRL+ALT+d Sign Clipboard CTRL+ALT+s Export Clipboard CTRL+ALT+x Import Clipboard CTRL+ALT+i In case of an error, it's possible that another program already uses some of the hotkeys. WinPT will tell you which hotkey wasn't installed properly so it's easier to figure out which hotkey caused the problem. Current Window Support ---------------------- WinPT allows you to use the main operations (sign and encrypt) within the current window. This only works if the current window contains text. For example, a mailer window with the message, a text editor or a simple edit field. There are some kind of windows that are NOT supported. The easiest way to access this feature is using the hotkeys. Note: if you use this feature the text will automatically be cut, encrypted and pasted again in the window. You don't need to do anything manually. Encrypt current window ALT+SHIFT+e Decrypt/verify current window ALT+SHIFT+d Sign current window ALT+SHIFT+s Alternately you can use the WinPT menu for the current window support. Please note, that the mode doesn't work very well if you use the menu entry. I recommend to use it with the hotkeys until I fix this problem. Word Wrapping ------------- As a new feature, WinPT can wrap lines at a specific column. You can set the value for this feature in the preferences dialog. If you don't want to use this feature, you only need to set the value to "0". Default keyid for Signing ------------------------- There are two ways to set the default keyid. The best solution is to set the "default-key" entry in the GPG options file. The second solution is that you use the Key Manager to set a default key. If no default key was found, WinPT uses the first useable key in the secret key cache. File Manager ------------ The filemanager is used to perform GPG operations on files. In further releases I'll add more commands. Currently, encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify is available. To add a file to the list element, you can use drag & drop or use the 'Open' menu entry, like Windows Explorer. Please note that this code is under heavy development, but is should be fairly stable. It possible that some parts don't work as expected, but feel free to mail me about any bugs! Proxy Support -------------- If you are not able to connect directly to the internet, you can use the proxy settings. To enable proxy support, you need to start the keyserver dialog and use the "change" button to set a proxy. Now the keyserver code uses the proxy instead of the direct connection. If your proxy needs some kind of authentification, you can use "proxy_user" and "proxy_pass". Then for each request the data is used. The code was tested with some HTTP/WWW proxies but it's also possible that it does *not* work with some proxies! Please tell me if you've problems with your proxy server. Debug Mode ---------- To make the detection of bugs and programming mistakes easier, WinPT contains a built-in debug mode. It can be activated with the '--enable-debug' switch on the command line. Then the WinPT output is more verbose and all steps are logged a in a file with the name "gpgme.dbg". This file is stored in the current directory and ONLY contains GPG related information. If you think it is a WinPT problem, you can find a debug file in c:\windows\temp. The name of this file is "winpt.log". It's possible that this file is very large, so do NOT forget to compress it. After an error has occured, it would be very useful to send this file to me. Which file you'll send depends on the occured error. Don't use the debug mode for your usual work; it slows down both GPG and WinPT.