Re: The enormous potential that programming LaTeX in Ada presents.

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

On Thursday, December 4, 2014 3:25:46 PM UTC, Simon Wright wrote:
> Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Current cryptography is capable of encrypting ASCII and at most the
> > entire Latin-1 set.
> 
> Looking back on Google I see that on 16 December 2013 I posted 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.ada/qJ5vpRQarSQ/QNvyYgYVjewJ
> which I've copied below.
> 
> So a year ago I demonstrated that
> 
> - minor tweaks will enable your code to:
> 
>   - deal with data on Windows and Unix systems and to transfer data
>     between them, and
> 
>   - deal with binary data,
> 
> - but the cipertext is >30 times the size of the original (because you
>   encode each byte of the input as 3 integers, represented as text).
> 
> These are practical matters and have nothing to do with the validity of
> the encryption technology.
> 
> ========================================================================
> Austin Obyrne <austin...@hotmail.com> writes: 
> 
> > The transition of this crypto from Windows to Mac is quite something 
> > and to my limited experience is a formidable task. 
> 
> No. 
> 
> I've put extensions at [1]; the README.txt says 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> The files here are intended to work with the SureCrypt software from 
> http://www.adacryptpages.com. They are written against version 85610, 
> and are relatively minor modifications of that software, so the 
> copyright status remains that of the original (Copyright © 2003 Austin 
> O'Byrne). 
> 
> There are two new programs: encrypt and decrypt. 
> 
> Encrypt usage: 
> 
>    encrypt original-plaintext ciphertext 
> 
> Decrypt usage: 
> 
>    decrypt ciphertext decrypted-plaintext 
> 
> Note that in spite of the use of the word "text" above the programs 
> will work with binary data. 
> 
> The programs will work on Unix and Windows systems. Data encrypted on 
> one can be decrypted on the other if required. 
> 
> Using a recent GNAT compiler, the programs can be built using the 
> supplied cipher.gpr: 
> 
>    gnatmake -p -P cipher 
> 
> Simon Wright 
> si...@pushface.org 
> December 2013 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> 
> From the software point of view, note that on Linux (which has a 
> case-sensitive file system) you should use lower case for Ada source 
> file names, so that, for example, Alices_Digital_Signature.ads becomes 
> alices_digital_signature.ads. 
> 
> From the practical point of view, I think that the size of the encrypted 
> files will be a serious issue. With the current code, they come out 
> *more* *than* *30* *times* the size of the original, so that the 
> encrypted SureCrypt85610.zip comes out at about 870 megabytes. Even if 
> you output the encrypted data in binary the multiplier will be 12 (each 
> byte of the original is encrypted as 3 integers). 
> 
> [1] https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a84i0jb8jv48nev/Q143ubNUWC 
> ========================================================================

I value your feedback greatly to the extent that I am archiving it as evidence to others - Austin