Topal: GPG/GnuPG and Alpine/Pine integration

Copyright (C) 2001--2010 Phillip J. Brooke

Contents

Introduction

Topal is a ‘glue’ program that links GnuPG and Pine/Alpine. It offers facilities to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails. It can also be used directly from the command-line.

Multiple PGP blocks included in the text of a message are processed. Decryption and verification output can be cached to reduce the number of times the passphrase is entered. RFC2015/3156 multipart messages can be sent and received with help from some scripts, procmail and a patch to Pine/Alpine. It includes basic support for verifying S/MIME multipart/signed messages. There is a remote sending mode for reading email on a distant computer via SSH with secret keys on the local computer. There is a high level of configurability.

See the list of features below.

Features

Important changes from previous stable versions

Recent stable releases have been numbered 55, 56, .... Prior to release 55, the stable releases were 0.7.2, 0.7.8, 0.7.9 and 0.7.13.6.

Important changes in release 70

The use-agent option sets GPG's --use-agent option as needed. Don't set it in any other way or it might be confusing....

Important changes in release 68

Important changes in release 65

An additional patch has been added. This should make the procmail recipe redundant. More testing is required: it may have broken other Alpine features.

Important changes in release 60

Important changes in release 58

Important changes in release 55

Important changes in version 0.7.10

The recommended procmail recipe has been changed.

Important changes in version 0.7.8

topal-fix-email and topal-fix-folder have been replaced by the main topal binary. Change topal-fix-email in your .procmailrc to be topal --fix-email. (Or add symlinks: the binary checks what it has been called as.)

You must clear your cache otherwise the changes made for inline-separate-output (added in version 0.7.8) will break (this occurs regardless of whether the option is on or off). This new feature shows the GnuPG/Topal output separately, then hands back the decrypted or verified output without any wrappers. This makes it more suitable for dealing with attachments (but you need to set it manually via topal -config).

Finally, the send menu has a new option: ‘Pass through unchanged’. This does nothing to the message so, you can always have Topal invoked as a filter for sending.

Installation and configuration

Compilation and installation

To compile Topal, you need

There is a makefile: simply type make. Type make install to actually install. The default location is /usr, so you'll need to be root to install. Alternatively, use make install INSTALLPATH=/usr/local to install into /usr/local. (Or use the more specific variables INSTALLPATHBIN, INSTALLPATHMAN, INSTALLPATHDOC and INSTALLPATHPATCHES.)

(Cygwin users: before using the makefile, please apply the patch cygwin.patch. I haven't recently tested this....)

MIME sending

MIME sending requires the Topal version of mime-tool (included with the Topal sources, and compiled and installed at the same time using the Makefile). Also see Pine/Alpine patches below.

MIME viewing

MIME viewing can be handled via metamail, run-mailcap, or by saving to a file in the ~/.topal directory and viewed with Alpine. If you are using the second patch (see Pine/Alpine patches below), then depending on your Alpine configuration, Alpine might say something like “Attachment SIGNED unrecognized. Try opening anyway?” - you should say yes in that case.

Pine/Alpine patches

For -sendmime to work, you will need to patch Pine/Alpine.

There are patches for versions 4.44, 4.50, 4.53, 4.58. 4.60 and 4.64 of Pine. (They're all more-or-less the same patch.) cd into the pine4.xx directory and use the patch command.

There are patches for Alpine: versions 1.00, 1.10 and 2.00 (patch 1 and patch 2). Please note that the Alpine patches also modify Alpine's configuration. There is a hidden preference ‘enable Topal hack’ (enable-topal-hack) that you need to switch on.

It doesn't seem to have broken anything else.... It seems to work for sending via an SMTP server - it might break for sending via /usr/lib/sendmail (if it does, please send me a debug trace by invoking pine with ‘-d 9’).

Pine/Alpine configuration

Assuming that the topal binary is installed in /usr/bin, set up the Pine/Alpine sending and display filters as follows: 

display-filters=_BEGINNING("-----BEGIN PGP ")_ /usr/bin/topal -display _TMPFILE_ _RESULTFILE_

sending-filters=/usr/bin/topal -send _TMPFILE_ _RESULTFILE_ _RECIPIENTS_,
                /usr/bin/topal -sendmime _TMPFILE_ _RESULTFILE_ _MIMETYPE_ _RECIPIENTS_

You can choose either or both of the sending filters. The -sendmime option allows the user to choose the MIME type of the outbound email. (Legacy fixes are in place that make -decrypt and -verify behave the same as -display.) Note that _RECIPIENTS_ should be last.

You can also add --read-from _INCLUDEALLHDRS_ before -send and -sendmime. This makes Topal attempt to guess a suitable key for signing and self-encryption. If multiple possible keys match, then you'll be offered a menu of the keys.

Mailcap configuration

To decode MIME RFC2015/3156 multipart/signed and /encrypted messages requires the assistance of metamail. Add in either the user mailcap configuration (.mailcap) or the system configuration (/etc/mailcap) the lines 

multipart/signed; /usr/bin/topal -mime '%s' '%t'; needsterminal
multipart/encrypted; /usr/bin/topal -mime '%s' '%t'; needsterminal
application/pgp; /usr/bin/topal -mimeapgp '%s' '%t'; needsterminal

Procmail configuration

From Topal 65: this recipe is no longer needed if you are using patch-2. (However, I have received one report of intermittent crashes with that patch.)

In your procmailrc, add the recipe: 

:0fw
| /usr/bin/topal --fix-email

This examines all inbound emails. Those with top-level multipart/signed or multipart/encrypted MIME types are modified to add a multipart/misc wrapper so that Pine/Alpine can hand it off to Topal. All other emails are left unchanged.

I strongly advise that you also use one of the backup recipes from the procmail manual. See also the notes in fixing multipart emails.

Topal configuration

Create a directory called ‘${HOME}/.topal’. This is currently hard-coded into Topal. Create the basic configuration file by running topal with the -dump or -default options. This file should be named ‘config’.

All .topal files are silently ignored if they cannot be found. Comments begin with a # in the first column, and run to the end of a line. They are totally ignored and are not currently preserved. Parsing errors cause an exception.

If you want to include strings with spaces, you'll need to quote them with double-quotes ("). Double-quotes themselves can be included by ‘stuffing’ ("").

Topal usage

Help!

-help as the first argument dumps a help message.

The help message is derived from the help.txt file (included at compile time).

See help.txt for information on non-Pine use of Topal.

Send email to me if you're really stuck.

Configuration

-config as the first argument brings up the configuration menu. This menu is also available when sending (so that the signing key can be changed).

However, not all features can be configured via the menus. In some cases, you'll need to edit .topal/config.

If you want to change the comment mentioning Topal when sending messages (i.e., the bit saying Topal (http://freshmeat.net/projects/topal)) then modify the sending-options (via the configuration menu or the config file).

Colours were introduced in release 71. If you want to turn them off, set ansi-terminal=off in the config file. You can change the colours by setting colour-menu-title, colour-menu-key, colour-menu-choice, colour-important, colour-banner and colour-info. The codes are the escape codes (see, for example, colour table in the Wikipedia article on ANSI escape codes.).

Decryption/verification

Depending on configuration, Topal will either ignore the file altogether, ask you what you want to do with it, or proceed to process the file automatically.

GPG will ask you for your passphrase when it needs it.

Caching is in place; the results of decryption and verification are (subject to configuration) saved in ~/.topal/cache. The results of caching mean that you won't be repeatedly asked for your passphrase, at the expense of storing decrypts in the clear.

Be warned: Topal often invokes less to view something. So you'll need to use q to get out of it. metamail or run-mailcap may be called for anything after MIME processing.

A new option (for version 0.7.8) called inline-separate-output concerns inlined (i.e., not MIME) messages. If the option is on, then the Topal/GnuPG output will be shown to you by less. Then the decrypted or verified output will be handed back to Pine/Alpine. This is the way to approach attachments. However, you will normally want to keep this option off, because if you're reading (for example) BugTraq mailings, then it will want you to hit q an awful lot....

Sending

Main send menu

Topal initially displays some chatter about selecting keys, including (if possible) a key for the sending user. After that, you will be presented with the sending main menu. Some options (e.g., those relating to MIME features) will not be offered unless you use the -sendmime option. 

** Main send menu:
 Sending mode: No GPG                            
               Inline plain          
 Signing key: 9DAF9B5C 2005-10-21 Dr Phil Brooke 
 1 key(s) in key list      0 attachment(s)
[lkr] List/edit recip. keys   [@] Add own key       [w] Edit own key
[n] Pass through unchanged    [1] Inline plain      [v] View mail 
[e] Encrypt                   [2] app/pgp           [m] Edit mail
[s] Sign-encrypt              [3] multipart/*       [a] List/edit attachments
[c] Clearsign                 [4] multipart encap   [o] Configuration
[g] Go!                       [r] Remote!           [q] Abort!

‘Abort’ tells Pine/Alpine you don't want Topal to process the email anymore.

‘Pass through unchanged’ does nothing to the message. This means that you can always have Topal invoked for sending.

‘Add own key’ adds an ‘encrypt to self’ key. (It is added by default, but if you remove it, this is a quick way to restore it.)

When you select ‘Go!’ you will be asked to confirm the command-line, and after processing, less is invoked to visually check that the desired result has been achieved. Again, a confirmation is asked for.

Topal can offer a choice of three MIME types. Don't use (2 - app/pgp) unless you really know what you're doing. (4 - multipart encap) is only relevant if you are signing and encrypting: this encapsulates a MIME signed message inside an encrypted message. Otherwise, we do both operations at once. (If you choose ‘clearsign’ and ‘multipart/*’, then all trailing blank lines will be deleted. Note also that Pine/Alpine appears to delete trailing whitespace in trailing blank lines.)

‘Configuration’ offers the same menu that is available from the -config option.

List current recipient keys

‘List current recipient keys’ offers a list of recipients: 

** Key list menu:
 1 key(s) in key list      
Select key or [dq] to quit and return to main send menu
           or [s] to select a key after searching in the main keyring
           or [ak] to add keys from the main keyring 
                    (not recommended, use `s')
Displaying choices 1 to 1 of 1 to 1    (<,) page up   (>.) page down 
 1 - 9DAF9B5C 2005-10-21 Dr Phil Brooke

‘Quit and return to main send menu’ sends you back to the first menu.

‘Add key from main keyring’ prompts you for a search pattern. It will do a general search on your GPG keyring and add all matching keys. Beware of just pressing enter - it will select all keys on your keyring.

A better alternative is to use the ‘select after search’ option. This also does a search on your GPG keyring, but then you must select one key to be added to your list of recipients.

Examine key menu

Selecting a key will offer a third menu (a similar menu is offered when selecting a single key): 

** Examining key currently in key list:
Key: 9DAF9B5C 2005-10-21 Dr Phil Brooke                  
[d] Display details of key with less   [v] Verbosely
[r] Remove key from list               [kql] Return to key list

‘Return to key list’ takes you back to the second menu.

‘Display details of key (less)’ simply uses GPG to list the key details via less. You'll need to use ‘q’ to get out of less.

‘Verbose details of key (less)’ pipes verbose output from GPG for this key into gpg. You'll need to use ‘q’ to get out of less.

‘Remove key from list’ removes the key from this recipient list.

Command-line usage

Sending (-nps)

If you invoke Topal on the command-line with a filename as an argument, it will offer the sending functions on that file. It doesn't actually send anything: instead it allows you to encrypt, sign, etc. the message. You have a choice of overwriting or preserving the original file (this bit is case-sensitive). So e, s, c are different from E, S, C. 

** Main send menu:
 Sending mode: No GPG                            
 Signing key: 9DAF9B5C 2005-10-21 Dr Phil Brooke 
 1 key(s) in key list     
[lkr] List/edit recip. keys   [@] Add own key       [w] Edit own key
[n] Pass through unchanged    [D] Detach sig prsv   [v] View mail 
[e] Encrypt                   [E] Encrypt prsv      [m] Edit mail
[s] Sign-encrypt              [S] Sign-encrypt prsv [o] Configuration
[c] Clearsign                 [C] Clearsign prsv    [q] Abort!
[g] Go!                       [r] Remote!           (prsv = keep original)

The main purpose of this mode is for encrypting or signing attachments before they are attached to the message in Pine/Alpine. Beware that Pine/Alpine does not feed the attachments to a sending filter. Or you could use the attachments option when using Pine with MIME emails.

MIME functions are not available in this mode: it makes no sense.

Receiving (-pd)

Invoking Topal with only -pd as an argument causes it to read a message from standard input and attempt to decrypt/verify it. This is useful for piping MIME messages from other applications.

(New in release 71.)

Remote and server mode

Suppose you are reading your email on a remote host via ssh (as I often do). You now want to compose an email and sign it, but your secret key is only accessible on the local computer. Topal has rudimentary support for this (primarily to support my style of working). This comes in two parts: a ‘server’ mode to run on the local computer (with access to the secret key) and a remote option in the sending menu.

The server mode (on the local host) is started by running topal -server. This is where GPG requests for signing are made.

When sending, you can choose ‘remote’. This prompts for the host to connect to using ssh/scp: this host should be running the ‘server’. The files are sent to the local server, processed by the server, then the results are copied back. ssh and scp are both used: because they're used repeatedly, you might want to use key-based authentication and have the key added to a current ssh-agent.

There is also a remote mode for receiving, with a similar behaviour as for sending. Alternatively could use something like unison (or some other file synchroniser or a simple scp) to move the email(s) concerned, then view them on the local computer.

Fixing multipart emails

Two scripts used to be included with topal (long ago): topal-fix-email and topal-fix-folder. They have been replaced by the --fix-email and --fix-folder command-line options to the main binary.

topal --fix-email modifies any email that is (at the top level) a multipart/signed or multipart/encrypted message. It creates a multipart/misc message instead: this revised message is simply a wrapper version of the original message so that Pine/Alpine can pass the signed or encrypted part to Topal.

Usage:

topal --fix-folder <folder> ...
This fixes the old email folders you may have.
topal --fix-email
Takes no arguments; it accepts a single email on stdin. Ideally, it should be invoked by procmail (see the configuration section above).

topal --fix-email has a simpler mode (--simple) where it pretends that there are two MIME content types: ‘application/x-topal-encrypted’ and ‘application/x-topal-signed’. You might prefer using this.

Why do we need this? If we just set the .mailcap file for, say, multipart/signed, then Alpine (at least version 1.00) is unable to handle a top-level multipart/signed email: an error message starting ‘Can't find body for requested message’ is seen. But multipart/signed inside a multipart/mixed (or multipart/alternative, etc.) can be successfully handed-off to Topal.

Replying to such messages is a pain: you'll have to save off the actual message and read it in. Suggestions on fixing this are welcome....

See Workaround.Fix_Email in the sources for more details.

Notes

The Pine/Alpine patches, and sending other attachments

What does the (first) patch to Pine/Alpine do? It removes some of the safety checking when changing the content-type (_MIMETYPE_) in a filter. Normally, if the returned content-type is not text/*, then the entire content-type is dropped.

The patch instead adds a flag, ‘topal_hack’, and sets this if the returned content-type is not text. From time-to-time, we pretend that the body is normal text. We take a little care to check if this message is already a multipart message, so hopefully, the normal sending of attachments still works.

The second patch file (new from Topal release 65 for Alpine 2.00) slightly modifies some of the mail reading code to allow .mailcap settings to act directly on top-level multipart messages.

Key IDs and keylists

Topal internally lists keys by their fingerprint. It uses GPG to look up key fingerprints by using whatever GPG can cope with.

Duplicate keys are silently suppressed. Removing a key only removes one instance, if somehow you've coerced Topal to list duplicates (which is quite easy, since adding a key with its short key ID, and the same key with its fingerprint will add two identical keys).

The way that Topal chooses the keys is as follows:

The keylist is a way to say, ‘for this particular email address, use this particular key’. In your config file, include lines such as 

ake=50973B91,philb@soc.plym.ac.uk
ake=50973B91,pjb@lothlann.freeserve.co.uk

These mean ‘use key 50973B91 for the given email addresses’. Similarly,

xk=50973B91

means ‘don't use key 50973B91’. There are also similar sake and sxk options for the secret key selection (via --read-from) (although the testing of the secret key listings is less thorough so far).

Sending defaults

The sd expressions can assign a default to a key ID or email address. The special expression @ANY@ matches any email address (or key). The last matching sd expression applies.

Example: the following means that the default settings for the given address are encrypted and inline plain.

sd=pjb@lothlann.freeserve.co.uk,eI

Topal will warn you if you are sending to multiple recipients, and sd has selected encryption, and not all of the recipients have keys.

(New in release 68.)

Errors

Bad things happening should result in Topal setting its exit status to ‘failed’, so Pine should detect this and not send your email.

Bug reports are welcome: send them by email to me (contact details below).

Decrypting attachments

If an attachment is a plaintext PGP ASCII-armoured message, then Topal will be invoked by Pine. You probably want to say ‘no’ when asked here (beware of the configuration options here). Otherwise, you'll get a decrypted file with the original attachment filename, plus the various Topal headers.

Locale problems

GPG does not do any encoding of input data. This means that the encoding is dependent on Pine/Alpine and Topal. If a message is sent with one encoding and received by a user running in a different locale, then we might end up with a good message not verifying (i.e., bad signature).

I currently have no way to automatically fix this. However, the --ask-charset option will ask during inline decryption/verification if you want to change the encoding. If you know that the message was written by a UTF-8 user (and you're in a different locale), this might help. (This only happens if a bad signature is returned.)

I know it's a kludge. I'd be interested to hear success and failure reports.

“Couldn't find certificate needed to sign.”

A regular query (for both Topal and other OpenPGP filters) concerns the message “Couldn't find certificate needed to sign.” This message is part of Alpine's S/MIME support: it is nothing to do with Topal. One option is to turn off the internal S/ MIME support via the (hidden) config option ("S/MIME -- Turn off S/ MIME").

Cleaning up the cache

You might want to run something like 

find ${HOME}/.topal/cache -mtime +7 | xargs rm

to remove all the cache files that are a bit old (in this example, 7 days old or older).

Remote and server mode

When remote is invoked in a sending menu:

For receiving: if decrypt-not-cached/decrypt-cached are set to 2 (ask), then as well as offering to decrypt (yes or no), it will also offer remote decryption. The caching settings are irrelevant at this point.

Working with GPG Agent

The use-agent configuration option has three values: (1) never use an agent, (2) only use it for decryption, (3) always use it. Don't put GPG's --[no-]use-agent options in any other configuration options.

New releases

To be notified of new releases of Topal, send an email to me.

Release numbering

The old release numbering was making less sense to me. New releases are simple integers. In the event that an earlier release is modified, I'll then add extra components to the release number.

Hints

Author

Phil Brooke wrote this, partially out of boredom, but mostly because he wanted a GPG/Pine add-on to do exactly what he wants. There are many similar programs.

If you like this program, please tell me. If you'd like it better with changes, please tell me what changes you want. If particular items on the ‘To do’ list are important to you, let me know. In particular, if you find bugs, feel free to tell me the details by email.

This package is released under the GPL: see the file COPYING.

I can be emailed on pjb@lothlann.freeserve.co.uk

My key ID is 0x50973B91; the key is available from web pages and public key servers.

If you want to send snailmail to me, email me for my (physical) address.

Licence

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

To do...

Version history

Look in release for the current release number.

06/2001, 0.1
First alpha release.
06/2001, 0.2
Minor changes.
06/2001, 0.3
Major changes to how keys are identified and looked up.
06/2001, 0.4
Adding more customization features.
11/2001, 0.4.4
Cleaned up some error messages; added -nps mode.
11/2001, 0.4.5
Added ‘gpg-options’ config item with default ‘--no-options’. (Forgot to add this note as well....)
11/2001, 0.5.0
Dumped -verify and -decrypt modes in favour of the multiple-block ‘-display’ mode. Added -help. Added caching. Added more switches relating to caching. Better output formatting.
11/2001, 0.5.1
Improved menus. Tidied up some of the interface. Added -s, which does the same as -nps.
12/2001, 0.5.2
Tidied disclaimer. Added synonyms for -help (-h, -?, --help, --h) Cleaned up menus; keypresses aren't echoed any longer.
12/2001, 0.5.3
Altered packaging to include version in directory name. Changed names of some -clear options to be a bit more sensible. Changing config settings method (big change). Making -s the default operation. Some rearrangement of code, constants. Some configuration editing possible via Topal. Send has access to configuration menu.
12/2001, 0.5.4
Bug fix; one-off error in the sending menus.
12/2001, 0.5.5
Removed redundant examples directory. Changed over to HTML documentation. Tweaked the RELEASE stuff. Use space instead of enter when waiting to continue: this looks forward to offering a help option at every prompt. The receive/blocks stuff now uses an expanding array. The GPG return value is checked when receiving: if it's bad, then some bits of the output are omitted; the cache file is not written. The date bit of Topal output moved onto the previous line (echo -n blah blah).
12/2001, 0.5.6
Adding installation instructions. Using tee and PIPESTATUS to get stderr on screen during receiving while also saving that output and recording gpg's exit status. Changed RELEASE filename to release. Tidied up the Makefile. Invalid passphrase messages are grep'd out of the output. Added ‘fast continue’ options. Key lists in the configuration section now use expanding arrays. Changed key details selection message. Secret key selection now offers a menu of secret keys on the secret keyring. Initial recipient search excludes keys in XK list. Added key search/selection menu choice - much nicer to use than the add menu. More configuration stuff added (still more to do, although the config file can always be used). Partial documentation update.
2/2002, 0.5.7
Adding limited RFC2015/MIME decoding of multipart email.
2/2002, 0.5.8
Adding mime-construct to configuration in expectation of more RFC2015 features. Put test for the config file existing before actually attempting to read it (oops). Added -O2 -Wall and the TOPALDEBUG variable for compiling. Put up WWW page via own Freeserve site. Announcing via Freshmeat. Automating output WWW site generation (all the grunge in the Makefile).
3/2002, 0.6.0
Distribution uses a gzip'd binary now.... Added a pre-built binary that is statically linked against the GNAT stuff so that people don't need to acquire GNAT first (this, I believe, complies with the GNAT licence).
Added the scripts topal-fix-email and topal-fix-folder. This makes it a lot easier to work with other people's multipart/signed or /encrypted email. Procmail recipe added to this README.
Added display of application/pgp messages. Including the text of one of these in a reply might be difficult, but then, it was difficult without topal's mangling. At least they can be verified and read now.
-sendmime option added. Hack needed (in topal-pine-patch [now pine-4.44.patch]) to allow non-text/blah content-types in Pine. RFC2015 send and received done (including micalg detection when sending clearsigned messages: list used from RFC3156.). Ditto for application/pgp, but I'm not sure of some of the parameters, since I've only ever seen signed emails of this form.
Removed some of the waits for execution, since it seems reliable. Added error checking on return value of GPG in sends.
3/2002, 0.6.1
The Content-Type for MIME sending is displayed on the screen using ‘cat’ rather than ‘less’, which was getting to be annoying.
Two changes that are related to how I manage the source code: Slight tweak to makefile for keeping track of RCS files; and using rcs -n<symbolic-name> to tag the released files.
3/2002, 0.6.2
MIME clear-signed messages: trailing blank lines are now deleted before signing (this would cause BAD signature when verifying on some other MTAs). Added remarks to documentation about the patch to Pine and attachments.
4/2002, 0.6.3
RFC1847 multipart encapsulation added. (See section 6.1 of RFC3156.) Cleaned up related receiving/caching behaviour.
Another MIME clear-signed messages bugfix. This one sorts out line-end conventions correctly.
New patch for Pine: this stops a SEGFAULT when using RFC2015 stuff and other attachments at the same time.
Updated documentation; added man pages for the two scripts.
4/2002, 0.6.4
New patch for Pine. Adds a workaround for the problem where some versions of MS Exchange would silently lose inbound MIME clearsigned email. It turns out that a slight formatting change stops the problem.
5/2002, 6/2002; 0.6.5, 0.6.6, 0.6.7, 0.6.8
Adding more debugging, mostly to the menus code. Used for tracking down a nasty problem causing exceptions. Many thanks to Felix Madlener for pointing this out and testing the revised code.
7/2002, 0.6.9
Renamed the Pine patch for when new versions come out. (It's still the same patch as for Topal 0.6.4.) Added trap for non-existent file when using ‘-s’. Cache directory as well as .topal directory is also chmod'd to 700. Added README.txt to package file (even though it's generated from the .html) so that those who just want to ‘less’ it (instead of firing up a HTML reader) can do so.
8/2002, 0.7.0
Changed email address in man page. Lots more exception handling for extra info when something goes wrong. Moderate code reorganisation: mostly splitting blocks of code out for future work. Fixed ‘bug’ (feature?) where send fails if a public key is unusable (although this may risk sending plaintext through; we assume that if an output file was generated, then the GPG errors weren't fatal). Now we check instead if the output file exists. Checking all source files for any similar bugs in menus (cf. the 5/2002 entry). Modified MIME RFC2015 receiving function so that it isn't so reliant on shell calls of sed (which can fall over with nasty characters in an incoming emails boundary). Moreover, it can now cope with MIME parts that don't end with a newline. Tweaking MIME/verify cache handling: we shouldn't actually get an output file from GPG (since we're only verifying one part with the other); we put a vague warning if this happens, and trap when reading the cache. Added content-type to plaintext for MIME/encrypted. Documentation update.
8/2002, 0.7.1
Fixed minor bug with inverted return code (‘-s’ trap). Doc update.
9/2002, 0.7.2
Fixed minor bug in key list handling code (dealing with key selection).
9/2002; 0.7.3, 0.7.4 (BETA)
Disposed of the dependency on a shell by introducing Ada bindings for fork/exec/dup/pipe/glob, etc.. Several external binaries are no longer needed (cat, echo). Most return codes are now properly checked (although still need to do a better audit). Followed Eduardo Chappa's advice and changed Pine patch version letter. Miscellaneous cleanups and fixes. Many thanks to Peter Losher for giving me the incentive to sort out the external calls.
9/2002; 0.7.5 (BETA)
Tidying up structure of external calls, and how the various messages are built up and torn down. Changed the lynx switches at the suggestion of Felix Madlener (many thanks!). When receiving MIME encrypted attachments, the output is not included in the Topal output, but only in the metamail invocation.
10/2002; 0.7.6 (BETA)
Explicitly noted which versions are not intended for general use (beta versions). Rearranged command line parsing for more flexibility in future.
10/2002; 0.7.7 (BETA)
Re-implementing topal-fix-email and topal-fix-folder as part of the main topal binary. This removes the (script) dependency on munpack, but adds formail and diff to the main binary. Fixed some missing bits for particular binaries in configuration handling. Adding ‘important changes from last stable version’ documentation. Tweaked the body extraction procedure. Tweaked some output messages. Major changes to menus: they now use enumerated types rather than integers.... Tweaking cl_menu some more. Added ‘pass-thu’ option to send menu (so you can always use the Topal filter. This might also fix the minor problem with text/html occasionally being sent when it shouldn't be....) Fixed bug where MIME decrypt failure would still cause metamail to be invoked, but that's a waste of time.
10/2002; 0.7.8
Clearing out case statements with ‘when others’. Tidying up sending.adb. Fixed problem in MIME output where a leading blank line was added. Finally implemented ‘topal --fix-folders’ functionality added. No longer need the two old scripts (I hope)! Another documentation tidy-up. Added ‘inline-separate-output’ option: this effectively turns off the GnuPG/Topal wrappers in output. However, the side-effect is that the cache must be cleared when upgrading to this version.
11/2002; 0.7.9
Added some infrastructure for encrypting/signing attachments (but this is nowhere near working yet). Documentation and manpage update (again). Seems stable, will release.
2/2003; 0.7.10, 0.7.11
Tweaking distribution pages (mkdistrib). Including patches against Pine versions 4.50 and 4.53. (They're all more-or-less the same patch. It's pretty easy to apply them against 4.51 and 4.52 if you feel so inclined.) Further doc clean up (particular the stuff about important changes from previous stable versions). Implemented Felix M.'s suggestion for handling non-existant command-line options: things that aren't valid options, but are prefixed with a ‘-’ get a more helpful error message. --fix-email workaround also writes out the original input in the exception handler. Changed recommended procmail recipe so that Topal's exit code is checked.
2/2003; 0.7.12
Adding ‘workaround-error-log’ file to .topal. This accepts output from topal --fix-email when it fails to exit cleanly. Not quite clear if this bit works yet (was tracking down other problem). It appears that when running without a real terminal, the call to set_echo fails. Odd. Nasty workaround implemented.
2/2002; 0.7.13
Added missing includes to ada-echo-c.c. Perhaps related to issue in the previous entry.
4/2003; 0.7.13b
Bug fix release only - backported from (not-yet-released 0.8.0). Fixed bug when changing own signing key using the -config option - thanks to Stewart James for the bug report.
10/2003; 0.7.13.2
Bug fix release only - backported from (not-yet-released 0.8.0). Changed bug fix versioning scheme. Makefile now links properly against static GNAT runtime. Fixed problem which manifests as: ‘relocation error: /lib/libreadline.so.4: undefined symbol: BC’ (needed instruction to link against ncurses) - thanks to Marty Hoff for the bug report. Added patch against Pine version 4.58.
10/2003; 0.7.13.3
Now use -gnatwa and -gnato for all Ada compilation. It was omitted from the main binary build command before. Fixed all the resulting warnings.
1/2004; 0.7.13.4
Patched externals calls for errno to prevent (in some cases) warnings from ld.so, and in other cases, failures to build.
6/2004; 0.7.13.5
Added patch against Pine version 4.60. Updated some notices.
1/4/2005; 0.7.13.6
Calls to the GPG binary now have LANG set to C before exec so that we don't have to worry about different language output in GPG. Thanks for Joern Brederec for the bug report and suggestion of how to fix it.
2005-2007
Four internal development releases junked.
8/1/2008; release 55
--fix-email now replaces the original message with a multipart/misc wrapper, rather than expanding it into a multipart/alternative message.
Replaced some key selection code. Hopefully, this reduces the number of locale-dependent and GPG version-specific problems. Additionally, revoked, disabled and invalid keys are no longer offered; checks are made to ensure that the key is valid for encryption/signing when applicable.
New patch for Alpine 1.00. Includes configuration setting.
The ‘pass through unchanged’ send option no longer modifies the content-type to text/plain.
Should now build and run on Cygwin.
Licence is now GPL-3.
Attempt to prevent potential memory leak (if running for a long time) by making the implementation of expanding_array a controlled type.
Cleaned up Ada source to reduce warnings.
Other minor changes, e.g., better checks on keylists, documentation clean-up.
Changed release numbering.
HTML cleaned up and CSS added.
8/1/2008; release 56
--read-from option added to select different signing keys depending on the From line. Also added sake and sxk configurations.
Fixed bug in Keys.Remove.Key (didn't match if the full fingerprint wasn't given).
Command-line parser now accepts 1 or more hyphens for any option.
Improved keylist documentation.
Corrected release date for release 55... oops.
8/1/2008; release 57
Initial attempt at supporting attachments within Topal.
Changed MIME boundary detection code (the previous algorithm couldn't cope with multipart included in a signed email). Please tell me if this breaks your emails....
Bug fix to _INCLUDEALLHDRS_ - it needs to turn the CRLF back into LF or it might chop off some of your message....
22/6/2008; release 58
UI improvements (count keys in keylist, clearer indication of position in menus).
Added patch for Alpine 1.10. Renamed all patch files.
Default paths for binaries are no longer absolute.
Configuration files now allow comments, but they're not preserved by Topal.
Added more exception handling messages.
Sending and receiving both save off original input as tempfiles to help debugging.
Added --ask-charset command line option. This is really only for testing a new workaround for locale-related bad signatures. Please see locale problems in the notes and send feedback.
Started removing dependency on mime-construct; new source files mime.ad[sb].
Build date added to binary.
3/7/2008; release 59
Added sequence numbers to temporary files to reduce possible name conflicts.
The makefile's install target now installs to INSTALLPATH. This can be overridden, e.g., make install INSTALLPATH=/usr/local. The four more specific paths, INSTALLPATHBIN, INSTALLPATHMAN, INSTALLPATHDOC and INSTALLPATHPATCHES can also be overridden. Fixes request from Nils Schlupp re: ebuild.
The --ask-charset command-line option is now only used if a bad signature is returned; a second attempt is then made if a different character set is suggested by the user.
13/7/2008; release 60
Update installation instructions for make install.
We now use a modified version of Jeffrey S. Dutky's mime-tool instead of mime-construct for creating MIME messages. We include our modified version in the Topal tarball (since both are GPL, and our modifications are needed if creating MIME messages).
MIME viewing can now use metamail, use run-mailcap or save the attachment to the folder ~/.topal/viewmime (which you can then open in Alpine). run-mailcap and saving support are new.
Sending menu allows user to view and edit the email. A quicker method for changing/setting the signing (own) key is available.
14/7/2008; release 61
An initial, rather crude, but (for my purposes at least) effective remote mode for sending.
Some history is now saved.
17/7/2008; release 62
Added basic support for S/MIME verification of messages.
Quoted-printable encoder (in MIME-tool) improved (single dots and leading "From ") as per RFC2049.
Decode quoted-printable and base64 before calling run-mailcap.
Ignore errors in strip in Makefile (trips up Cygwin, which expects the executable to be foo.exe).
Update feature list for remote sending.
Internal changes to configuration storage.
31/8/2008; release 63
Update change list for release 62 (omitted some items...).
Give a sensible warning message instead of dying with an exception when (1) signing operations are called without own key set; (2) attempting to choose own key without any secret keys available.
Added some hints in the documentation.
Initial attempt at supporting remote decryption.
Handle SIGINT ourselves so that temporary files are cleaned up. Also clean up more often when exceptions occur.
24/10/2008; release 64
Update feature list for release 63's remote decryption support.
Add patch to Topal sources for Cygwin. (The recent interrupt code doesn't build.)
Bug fix: temporary files weren't being deleted, because Rm_Tempfiles_PID hadn't been changed to match Temp_File_Name.
Added patch for Alpine 2.00. Alpine's S/MIME needs to be turned off for Topal's S/MIME verification to work.
Bug fix in Externals.Simple.Guess_Content_Type.
1/5/2009; release 65
MIME sending now uses the current locale as the content-type header charset.
MIME receiving (verification) tries to use the character set given in its first attempt.
Signing calls to GPG use --textmode flag (shouldn't be needed if the dos2unix calls work, but experiments suggest some problems if we don't do this).
Fix remote server so that emails with multiple recipients are handled properly.
Added new patch to Alpine that might make it easier to read multipart signed/encrypted messages. This makes the procmail recipe redundant, but needs more testing.
Attempt to manage different character sets when verifying S/MIME.
MIME messages now include a prolog explaining that they're OpenPGP messages. Also added appropriate Content-Disposition headers to help client programs.
Update docs re: Alpine patches.
Code cleanup (e.g., vars that could be declared constant, and some unused procedure formals).
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.
21/7/2009; release 69
No longer calling an external app for line-end conversions.
Added a note re: Alpine's S/MIME message about certificates.
Show the list of recipients just before sending (from the to/cc/bcc lists; not lcc, as Alpine doesn't pass those to in the _RECIPIENTS_ token). The idea is to allow the user to spot the “oh no, I didn't intend to email that person” problem.
22/9/2009; release 70
Added use-agent configuration option. This has three values: (1) never use an agent, (2) only use it for decryption, (3) always use it. Don't put GPG's --[no-]use-agent options in any other configuration options or it might be confusing.
Adding attachments when using a non-MIME mode forces a change to a suitable mode (where possible).
Presentation changes for recipient list check.
Fixed a minor typo in a user message.
25/2/2010; release 71
Added more MICALGs from RFC4880.
Handle missing Content-Type headers in multipart messages.
Reorganise menus: hopefully, they're easier to read now. Add some colourisation (this can be disabled by setting ansi-terminal to off). Assorted tidying.
Warn if sending defaults to encryption, but some keys are missing.
Add -pd - pipe-display mode. Takes stdin and treats it as a MIME email for display/verification.
Release code is now taken from the README.html file rather than a separate release file.
Slight clean-up of this README.
25/2/2010; release 72
Fix menus for non-Pine sending. (‘Go’ wasn't working!)
Trap attempts to encrypt when no keys are in the key list.
Minor change to distrib text and Makefile.
Distrib target in Makefile now uses GPG agent.