Use GPG as OpenPGP implementation

Feature Proposal
1

It would be nice if DeltaChat had the ability to use GPG instead of the internal mechanism as OpenPGP implementation. This would have mainly thre advantages, if people want to use OpenPGP outside of DeltaChat, too:

  • Fast integration and simplification in existing environments, due to key handling in one single place
  • Great simplification for new users that start using PGP outside of DeltaChat as GPG integrates with most other solutions
  • Benefits from all GPG features, e.g. using one key for everything, wkd, wot, support for smartcards and so on

Admittetly, this is a feature for more experienced users, but I think it would improve the UX for powerusers a lot and also do a great step to not interfere with other E-Mail setups besides from DeltaChat.

However, I would not drop the internal OpenPGP implementation, but add GPG as expert setting or something like that, because dropping the internal OpenPGP implementation would probably really harm the UX for users that aren’t aware of how to use OpenPGP/GPG in the first place.

The equivalent for Android would probably be OpenKeychain integration.

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2

This would be very hard (to implement). Currently we don’t have the resources for something of this scope.

3

It’s possible to call gpg binary to do OpenPGP operations from the core, but the difficulties will arise with key management. Key selection in Delta Chat is different from what gpg uses, it depends on whether the chat is verified or not.

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