Egon

[Robert J. Hansen]

> then the pubkey must be manually imported but I believe it's just 
> another command?
I don't mean to give offense, really, but that's pretty much exactly the 
attitude that for so many years kept UNIX as a fringe player.

First off, whenever anyone says "it's just another command," 90% of the 
time they're wrong. Hackers and geeks massively underestimate the amount 
of interaction routine tasks take. Let's look at what your solution 
involves:

1. Learn bash well enough to understand whether you need to put
    this command in .profile, .bashrc, .bash_profile, or wherever.
    (bash has an embarrassing number of configuration files which
    are read under very slightly different conditions.)
2. Edit the appropriate configuration file to add this command
3. Remember to reload your configuration file
4. Run ssh-import-id-protonmail
5. ssh-import-id-protonmail gives a path: remember that path for
    the next step
6. gpg --import (the path given in step 5)
7. rm (the path given in step 5)

Steps 1-3 only need to be done once; steps 4-7 need to be done each time.

I don't doubt that your solution works great for you! For technically 
sophisticated users it makes a lot of sense.

But there's also something to be said for:

1. Download an installer package
2. Double-click on it
3. At the command prompt, type "egon name at protonmail.com"

... and have everything else done automagically. For non-technical 
users, steps 1-2 are easier than steps 1-3 in the bash version, and step 
3 is easier than steps 4-7 of the bash version.

The heart of good UX is to reduce the amount of user intervention that's 
necessary to achieve routine tasks. If you want to get someone's 
certificate from Proton Mail, that should literally be a one-liner that 
only requires you to remember the person's email address.

I don't much care whether someone uses "gpg --locate-key 
name at protonmail.com" or "egon name at protonmail.com". I do care that we 
make it as easy as possible for non-technical users, and make the 
experience streamlined. :)

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