Newbie GnuPG under Windows XP Pro - Redux

[Charly Avital]

John Clizbe wrote the following on 11/14/07 3:02 PM:
> Charly Avital wrote:
[...]

> Remove the load-extension line from gpg.conf. Win32 GnuPG 1.4 uses the native
> smart card interface, winscard.dll.
> 
> Smartcard support in GnuPG 2.x on win32 is still incomplete (Werner, please let
> me know if this has changed wrt gpg-agent).

Thanks John,

In MacOSX or in Ubuntu, I know how to open and edit ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf,
where gpg.conf is a text file where from gpg reads its options. I have
done it many times, when required.

But in Windows, there's something called gpg.conf.exe, which to my still
much limited knowledge of Windows, is an executable file, and I have no
idea how to actually open it. Sorry for the basic ignorance.

> 
>> 2. Output with gpg 2
>> How do I get rid of the utf CP720 not available? Or is it important?
> 
> I guess it's only important if you use CP720. CP720 is DOS console Arabic support.

No I don't use it. But it's still annoying to have this warning show up.

> 
> gpg2 on win32 is still pretty much alpha-ware. While parts of it may work, I'd
> stick with 1.4.7+.

I would gladly do that, if I only could comment or delete the
load-extension line about the wrapper (which should be required, I
believe, for the use of smart cards?)
> 
>> 3. Finally, I have made an attempt to install MinGW32, I am not sure
>> what the result has been, but it is present when I use gpg2 in
>> Thunderbird+Enigmail.
> 
> MinGW (as well as MSYS) is only needed if you intend on building your own GnuPG
> 1.4.x on Win32. Note: This is "officially" unsupported.
> 
> Building the GnuPG 2.x trunk on a win32 buildhost is unsupported

Well, sometime I'd like to try, if I could only comprehend how cli works
in Windows. Even with a very limited knowledge of Unix, I can manage
with cli in MacOSX or Ubuntu, but in Windows almost everything I try
comes out with 'not known' or a similar output.
> 
>> I know I have made quite a mess, so I apologize to the list.
> 
> No apologies required.

Well, gnupg-users is not the appropriate forum for this kind of queries.

I am not really a Windows user, nor intend to be. I believe I have
already indicated in a previous post that I am running Windows XP Pro,
or Ubuntu under a virtualisation program named Parallels Mac, that
interacts between Windows or Linux (or for that matter, some other OSs
too) and my Intel based computer processor.

Thanks for your feedback.

Charly