[OTR-users] Pretty-please standardize OTR signature storage, per OS.

[subharo at hushmail.com]

Hello Tamme, and others,

My Python guru, who wishes to remain anonymous, informs me:

"I think named pipes are not the right solution for Windows, don't
think they even exist.  It sounds like they want to make a something
like PuTTY agent, for managing SSH keys.  The source code for PuTTY
exists, someone could make a modified copy of it."

FWIW, I'd also like to point out that http://stackoverflow.com/ has 
excellent answers to well-poised, highly-sophisticated programming 
questions.

Tamme, *I applaud your efforts*, however I'd like to point out that 
the birthplace of OTR is Pidgin, and the birthplace of Pidgin is 
the Linux world.  Using any C# code at all, even just for testing-
related utilities, will probably scare away the majority Linux 
people.  Mono doesn't have a good reputation, generally, even 
though it's open source.  Even that faint whiff of Microsoft is 
distasteful enough to most Linux folks.

Tamme, you also wondered where the spec for OTR is.  It appears 
there is none.  All there is to go on, for now, it seems, is just 
to "wing it", after carefully observing the formatting seen in the 
config file that Pidgin creates, containing the OTR signature 
(which was mentioned a bit earlier, in this mailing list).  
Somebody, please correct me, if I'm wrong.

Furthermore, I've considered how involved I can get into this, and 
I've decided I can't offer more than this much.

I wish everyone the best in this, however I'm moving on for now, as 
I've come up with a primitive workaround to this duplicate OTR 
signature problem for: create a new, unique XMPP (or whatever IM-
protocol) account in each IM client one uses, each with a slightly 
different name.  Each unique account gets a unique OTR fingerprint, 
and then there is no "collision" in OTR fingerprints.  The 
unfortunate side effect is needing to add all of one's IM contacts 
multiple times, one for each unique account.  But that's not so 
bad, it just adds a few more minutes work (including the OTR 
signature exchange for each account, with each contact).  
Typically, even a sophisticated user would only use 2 or 3 OTR-
aware IM clients, in tandem.

Peace out,
Subharo