Dominik Schadow

Blog

  • Getting involved

    More and more people start using JCrypTool. As you can imagine, we are extremely happy about that! And more and more people start providing feedback via the SourceForge thumbs up or thumbs down button. This is probably the easiest way to get in touch with us. And the comment field provides room for a short review.

    I‘m having mixed feelings about this field. On one side it is of course nice to read ,I love feature xyz to do this and that.‘. But on the other side it tempts people to mention that JCT crashes or that they immediately found a bug. Yes, this happens.

    Don‘t misunderstand me, of course there a bugs in JCrypTool. And we do want to fix them. Every single one of them. So please, use our bug tracker, or our forum, or our mailing list to report a bug. We will fix it. Always. And we want you to continue using JCrypTool without having to work around that particular bug all the time. It‘s your choice, get involved.

  • New XML Security Tools build

    I have released a new XML Security Tools build today. This release includes only some documentation updates which are available in the Eclipse wiki too (in the Documentation/ User Guide section).

  • JCrypTool running for Best RCP Application

    JCrypTool is running for the Best RCP Application with the Eclipse Technology Awards again. The finalists will be announced on March 1st, the winner on EclipseCon 2010.

  • Refreshed JCrypTool Release Candidate 1a

    We released a refreshed JCrypTool Release Candidate 1a for download today. This releases fixes the not working language switch via the preferences and the not working Algorithms view on Linux (other systems were not affected). The clean up of the internal package usage in the Algorithms view is a positive side affect of this bugfix. The new FlexiProvider version 1.6.0p6 is available in this release too.

    Release Candidate 2 is scheduled for April. The reason for this long time is that we want to extend the documentation (online and context help) and provide the a complete theoretical part for this release. And end user documentation requires a lot of time. At the moment we expect the final version to be released sometime in summer this year.

  • The first release candidate for JCrypTool is finally here

    JCrypTool 1.0.0 Release Candidate 1 is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. For the first time we released versions for 32bit and 64bit for all supported operating systems. Download the new release today!. This release does not contain any new features but does complete and enhance the features from previous milestone releases and fixes different bugs.

    This is the first release candidate as we are getting closer to the final version. There will be at least two more release candidates until the final release will be available. As always we are interested in any feedback and bug reports, so feel free to get in touch with us via our forum or the mailing list.

  • New XML Security Tools build available

    A new XML Security Tools build is available. This new integration build on the official Web Tools download page contains a complete English online help for the whole plug-in as well as several UI enhancements and different bug fixes.

    The German tutorials are completely up to date too.

  • JCrypTool 1.0.0 Milestone 6 available

    JCrypTool 1.0.0 Milestone 6 is available for Linux, Mac and Windows systems on our download page.

    There are again plenty of changes and updates, see the JCrypTool 1.0.0 Milestone 6 – New and Noteworthy page for the new features.

    This is the last milestone release, JCrypTool is more or less feature complete. We are now entering the end game and will publish some release candidates at irregular intervals. So the next weeks will complete the online/ context help and as well as some missing details in the UI. Get ready for the final version…

    Your feedback, ideas, wishes and bug reports are as always welcome, so feel free to contact me or use the forum/ mailing lists on our home page.

  • New XML Security Tools release available

    A new XML Security Tools release is available for download. This release contains some minor UI enhancements in the XML Encryption Wizard which should make it easier to use. And I continued working on the documentation (a.k.a. online help) which now contains some parts of the XML Encryption Wizard too. As a reminder: all documentation is developed in the Eclipse wiki. Feel free to open a Bugzilla account and to help me.

  • Cross plug-in references in the Eclipse help

    Extending the Eclipse help is simply writing html pages. And linking between those pages is easy as long as the pages all reside in the same plug-in. Cross plug-in references (linking from plug-in A help page to plug-in B help page) requires just a little bit more information in the link:


    <a href="PLUGINS_ROOT/plug-in-id/path/page.html">My other plug-in</a>

    PLUGINS_ROOT will be replaced automatically during runtime. All you have to do is to replace the plug-in-id with the targets plug-in id and fill in the complete path to the html file. Even $nl$ parameters are possible here.

  • XML Signature and Canonical XML 2.0 drafts available

    The W3C has published two first drafts XML Signature Syntax and Processing and Canonical XML of the upcoming version 2.0.

    The new XML Signature version promises more simplicity and more performance. Chapter 10 lists the differences to the current version. In short: New namespace dsig2, Canonical XML 2.0 and a completely changed transformation model which isn't that general any more (which is good, since the completely open one we are using now may lead to a lot of security problems). The new one now separates between selection and canonicalization, which includes the new Selection element. In short this element chooses the data object that is to be signed.

    Canonical XML 2.0 brings in more performance and more security. It is still designed for XML 1.0, not XML 1.1 (so still no canonicalization for XML 1.1 out there). And as written above it is required for XML Signature 2.0.

    Since these are the first public drafts some things will change until the final recommendations will be available.