Rick van Rein wrote:
Message, data file, object, session
These terms are used in a rotary scheme, but the reader must assume they
mean the same thing, and not something slightly different. The original
thought of OpenPGP seems to have been message formats as sent by email,
but then PGP disk encryption came and the terms had to be altered.
Can be agree on one term for "the stuff that is PGP-ified" perhaps?
I think "OpenPGP data" will be fine, in contrast to "readable data".
"ciphertext" and "plaintext" sound more usual to me.
As for the "added side-effect" (which states the same thing doubly twice) I
see a cryptographic advantage in compression that should go here :- by
compressing a message, the entropy of the data that is encrypted is made
as high as possible.
Entropy is not altered by (lossless) compression.
Cheers,
Ben.