Frequently Asked Questons

1. What is Blowfish encryption?
2. Can DeadboltEdit be used for commercial purposes?
3. Does the Mac OS X version of DeadboltEdit support Autosave?
4. How are DeadboltEdit files named?
5. Can I use graphics or special characters in my DeadboltEdit notes?
6. How is the encryption compatible with OpenSSL?
7. Can DeadboltEdit be used with USB flash drives or cloud storage?

1. What is Blowfish encryption?

   Blowfish is a strong encryption method that is widely accepted and used in commercial encryption products. The Blowfish encryption in DeadboltEdit is compatible with the OpenSSL implemention. A good explanation of the Blowfish cipher can be found here: Wikipedia: Blowfish Cipher.
   
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2. Can DeadboltEdit be used for commercial purposes?

   Yes. DeadboltEdit is free for everybody to use, and you may use it for any purpose you like, including commercial, government, public administration and educational use. For further details see the license information included with DeadboltEdit, or here: License Information.
   
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3. Does the Mac OS X version of DeadboltEdit support Autosave?

   No. There are no plans to implement Autosave.
   
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4. How are DeadboltEdit files named?

   Encrypted files are named with the file suffix ".ctxt", which identifies the file as a crypto-text file.
   
   Plain-text files ("File -> Save Plain Text File …") are named with the usual ".txt" file suffix, which should be usable with any text editor.
   
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5. Can I use graphics or special characters in my DeadboltEdit notes?

   The editor is for plain-text only, like Windows Notepad ™. Special characters, such as "£ and ©" are supported, but graphic elements are not.
   
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6. How is the encryption compatible with OpenSSL?

   When DeadboltEdit encrypts text, the actual encryption and encoding are compatible with OpenSSL encryption. This is an important consideration because the encryption implementation is verifiable against a respected implementation.
   
   The file format used by DeadboltEdit differs from the OpenSSL format because DeadboltEdit has additional information embedded in a file header to allow checking for file corruption. For this reason, you can't use DeadboltEdit files with OpenSSL.
   
   It is possible to remove file header information from a DeadboltEdit encrypted file, and then decrypt it with OpenSSL command-line tools using the same password that was used to encrypt it. There will be an article on the website Support page that will explain how to do this. This is not something you would want to do in actual practice, but it is a valuable excercise to demonstrate the correctness of the encryption implementation.
   
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7. Can DeadboltEdit be used with USB flash drives or cloud storage?

   Yes, DeadboltEdit can save and open files on external drives, such as flash drives and cloud storage (ex. Google Drive™). This is accomplished by using the normal File Open ("File -> Open …") and File Save ("File -> Save") dialogs, and navigating to the desired external drive.
   
   Note: The external drive must be connected and available to the computer prior to using with DeadboltEdit.
   
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