Gibberish
Gibberish Editor v3.3
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
-------------------------------------------------
1. WHAT IS GIBBERISH EDITOR?
Gibberish Editor is essentially a text editor that can encrypt and decrypt text.
2. HOW DOES GIBBERISH EDITOR ENCRYPT TEXT?
Currently, there are three secret key ciphers and one other key-less substitution cipher. A user can use any combination of these ciphers to encrypt the text that is in the text area. To recover the plaintext, the same combination of ciphers must be repeated, except backwards. While Gibberish Editor can handle any amount of text, it is recommended that the text to be encrypted or decrypted does not exceed 10,000 characters: the more characters there are, the slower is the process.
It is noteworthy that Gibberish Editor's encryption maintains the relative frequencies of all characters occurring in the text. Thus, any text that is encrypted by one or more cipher(s) of Gibberish Editor can be analysed using the statistical cryptanalysis tool.
3. CAN GIBBERISH EDITOR HANDLE LOWER AND UPPER CASE LETTERS, NUMBERS, SYMBOLS, LINE BREAKS AND TABS?
Yes. The only character on a standard keyboard that a user should not enter is an accent: `
4. CAN GIBBERISH EDITOR LOAD AND SAVE DOCUMENTS?
Yes. At this stage, it can handle all ASCII files: in particular those with a .txt extension.
5. CAN GIBBERISH EDITOR HANDLE MULTIPLE DOCUMENTS?
Yes. Gibberish Editor version 3.3 onwards can handle up to five documents on its desktop; each document is set up as an internal frame that can be reshaped, minimised or maximised. (It is also noteworthy that the bottom panel containing the keyword field and the command buttons can be dragged off and left floating or made into an icon so that the desktop space of Gibberish Editor becomes larger; the floating panel can always be put back into its original place when the extra space is no longer necessary.) Thus it is possible to look at and analyse several documents simultaneously.
6. CAN GIBBERISH EDITOR PRINT DOCUMENTS?
At the moment, no. The print function will be installed in the future once the JFCs that are associated with printing have been stabalised.
7. IS GIBBERISH EDITOR INTERNET SAVVY?
Yes it is. In the current version Gibberish Editor can send documents as email if the user is connected to the Internet and has access to an SMTP server. (In the future, Gibberish Editor may be able to do other Internet related things such as real time message transfer via UDP or file transfer.)
Gibberish Editor's email uses the SMTP protocol. Sun Microsystems has released an email API called JavaMail as a Java Standard Extension, but the current version of Gibberish Editor does not make use of the JavaMail API.
8. WHICH PLATFORMS WILL GIBBERISH EDITOR WORK ON?
Gibberish Editor is a Java software. Thus, it is effectively platform independent. The only requirement is that the computer in question has a Java virtual machine running.
9. WHICH JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE VERSION IS REQUIRED FOR GIBBERISH EDITOR?
Gibberish Editor was developed using JDK 1.1.7A and the Swing interface toolkit. Hence, the software suits a JRE of 1.1.7A or higher. The latest JRE can always be downloaded from Sun Microsystem's Web site, http://java.sun.com, for free.
10. WHAT IS SWING?
Swing is a graphical user interface toolkit for Java programmers. Under the older technology, called AWT, the look and feel of a Java GUI depends on the platform on which the program is running: if the user has a Windows OS then buttons will look like those on a typical Windows program; if the user has a Mac OS then buttons will look like those on a typical Mac program; and so on. Under Swing, the appearance of a Java GUI should be the same across all platforms. Moreover, since Swing has more functions than AWT, it makes GUI programming easier.
The look and feel of Gibberish Editor is called "Metal" and it is the default appearance of Swing. Some colours of the interface, however, have been changed. To learn more about JFC and Swing, visit Sun's Web site: http://java.sun.com.
11. HOW DO I INSTALL AND RUN GIBBERISH EDITOR?
Version 3.3 has eight class files, two internal class files, two text files and eleven html files:
GibberishEditorRun.class
GibberishEditor.class
SearchGE.class
EmailGE.class
TextAreaGE.class
HtmlViewer.class
HtmlViewer$SymHyperlink.class
HtmlViewer$PageLoader.class
FileFilterer.class
GEMetalTheme.class
getos.txt
gefaq.txt
mainge.html
ciphersge.html
cipheronege.html
ciphertwoge.html
cipherthreege.html
cipherfourge.html
searchge.html
emailge.html
shortcutsge.html
statcryptge.html
futurege.html
You will need to download these files, via the JAR file gibver33.jar or the ZIP file gibver33.zip, and place them in a new directory. Then, presuming you have an appropriate JRE installed, you can execute the program by typing
java GibberishEditorRun
at a console (eg, DOS console for Win32 users).
12. HOW DO I ENCRYPT AND DECRYPT TEXT?
To encode a message, open a new document and enter the message, or load a document from a file, select a cipher and enter a keyword, and then press the encode button; to decode a message, open the document that contains the message, select the cipher for the message and enter the keyword for the message and then press the decode button.
For cipher 1, the keyword must comprise unique characters. Furthermore, to achieve a stronger encryption while using cipher 1, it is recommended that the keyword contain a combination of numbers, symbols and lower and upper case letters. These conditions are not necessary for the other three ciphers. Nevertheless, it is probably convenient to use a single key for all ciphers.
Because each cipher changes the text is a particular way, it is possible (and recommended) to combine all four ciphers in an encryption routine. Having an encryption routine would strengthen the final ciphertext because decryption would require knowledge of both the keyword and the exact routine.
13. DOES GIBBERISH EDITOR HAVE HELP TOPICS AND THE LIKE?
Yes, the help files are html files that can be loaded within Gibberish Editor. Because these files are hypertext documents, a user will navigate through the help topics by using the hyperlinks. These documents explain everything from the mnemonics to the workings of the ciphers.
14. WHO DEVELOPED GIBBERISH EDITOR AND WHY?
Gibberish Editor was created in Australia by Stephen Lian, around October 1999, essentially as a means for the author to practise Java programming. Since then it has been improved and developed further. Future versions may have extra functionality yet, including a public key asymmetric cipher to handle the key distribution problem. At this stage the author is planning to implement an RSA cryptosystem as soon as the patent for the RSA algorithm expires, sometime in the year 2000.
Gibberish Editor FAQ. Last Modified 17 November 1999.
Back to the Gibberish applet page.
New on the Java Boutique:
New Review:
Time Management Made Easy with the Quartz Enterprise Job Scheduler
Why not just use the Java timer API? This open source scheduling
API boasts simplicity, ease-of-integration, a well-rounded feature
set, and it's free!
New Applet:
Reverse Complement
Reverse Complement is a simple applet that converts DNA or RNA
sequences into three useful formats.
Elsewhere on internet.com:
WebDeveloper Java
Lots of Java information on webdeveloper.com
WDVL Java
Thorough Java resource at the Web Developer's Virtual Library.
ScriptSearch Java
Hundreds of free Java code files to download.
jGuru: Your View of the Java Universe
Customizable portal with online training, FAQs, regular news updates, and tutorials.
|
