Topal: GPG/GnuPG and Alpine/Pine integration

Copyright (C) 2001--2009 Phillip J. Brooke

Topal is a `glue' program that links GnuPG and Pine/Alpine. It offers facilities to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails. This is the feature list from the README file:

• In-place decryption/verification, dealing with multiple blocks embedded in text.
• Caching of output to reduce need for passphrase (at expense of storing decrypts and verification output).
• Receiving of MIME RFC2015/3156 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted messages. Top-level multipart items need some modification: see the README section `fixing multipart emails'. These features are available to any program that uses .mailcap files.
• Sending of MIME RFC2015/3156 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted messages. (Needs a patch to Pine/Alpine.)
• Sending and receiving of the old application/pgp content-type (sending requires the same patch as the previous item).
• Basic support for verifying S/MIME multipart/signed messages.
• Offers user the opportunity to check output before sending it.
• Remote sending and decryption for when reading email on a distant computer via ssh with secret keys on the local computer.
• Rich configuration options.
• Shortcuts for selecting keys, as well as general key selection routines when sending email.
• Few arbitrary limits.

See the README file for all the stuff like licensing, TO DO, recent changes, etc.

The current release of Topal is 68. Send email to pjb@lothlann.freeserve.co.uk if you would like to be notified of new Topal releases by email.

The most recent changes were:

6/6/2009; release 66

Removed spurious spaces from Topal `-----' text that were messing up format=flowed text. Note that this doesn't fix cache files that already have this problem.
Changed the default sending and receiving GPG options (use the -default option to see them). This does not override whatever is in your current .topal/config file.
Added a configuration option `omit-inline-disposition-name': apparently some mail services mistreat inline MIME parts if they have a filename. If this option is set, then no filename parameter is added to inline content-disposition headers. The option can be changed via the configuration menu.

6/6/2009; release 67

Added another configuration option `omit-inline-disposition-header'. If a disposition header of value inline would be added, it's simply omitted altogether.

27/6/2009; release 68

Minor bug fix with configuration handling of omit-inline-disposition-header.
Added new configuration option save-on-send.
A range of major and minor changes to the sending interface.
Added the sd configuration option that allows keys or emails to be associated with particularly sending options.
When secret keys aren't available, still try to add a suitable key for self for encryption.
MIME viewer setting has been replaced by two: one for decrypt and one for verify.
Bad lines in the configuration file now result in a warning, not an exception.
Internal modifications to configuration handling.

Files available are:

• The README file.
• GNU Public Licence version 3.
• The source code package (184 kB, release 68) and a detached signature.
  You will need the source package, even if you don't want to compile Topal yourself. The documentation is included in the tarball.
• The topal binary for Linux x86 (228 kB, not stripped, gzip'd, release 68) and a detached signature. The output of ldd for the topal binary (on the build machine) is

  	linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0x4001c000)
  	libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x40039000)
  	libreadline.so.4 => /lib/libreadline.so.4 (0x4006b000)
  	libgnarl-4.3.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgnarl-4.3.so.1 (0x40097000)
  	libgnat-4.3.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgnat-4.3.so.1 (0x400cf000)
  	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0x403a7000)
  	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x403c0000)
  	libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0x403ce000)
  	libdl.so.2 => /lib/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0x40529000)
  	libm.so.6 => /lib/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0x4052d000)
  	/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
  

• The topal binary for Linux x86 (statically linked against the GNAT library, 356 kB, stripped, gzip'd, release 68) and a detached signature. You'll need to rename this as `topal'. The output of ldd for this binary (on the build machine) is

  	linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0x4001c000)
  	libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x40039000)
  	libreadline.so.4 => /lib/libreadline.so.4 (0x4006b000)
  	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0x40097000)
  	libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0x400b0000)
  	libdl.so.2 => /lib/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0x4020b000)
  	/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
  

• Some features (sending of any content-type except text/plain) require a patch to Pine. (See the README.)

Last generated: Sat Jun 27 15:00:07 BST 2009