No more "feature requests" without code

[The Beez]

Hi 4tH-ers!

I've just finished a feature request which was deposited in 2022. The question was to add a new encryption algorithm. We already had TEA and XTEA and finding another one that seemed comprehensible to me took quite some time.

Then it had to be turned into 4tH code. Now, I love programming, especially in Forth, but I hate it when my heart is not in it. And this one progressed painfully slow for that reason.

I'm sure some of you will be thrilled we now have AES encryption in 4tH (aka Rijndael) and I'm honestly very happy for you. But I don't use encryption very often. It's not a field I'm particularly interested in. To me, it's just a lousy way to spend my free time.

For that reason I'm not taking any "feature requests" anymore UNLESS there is some usable 4tH code that comes with it. This one almost made it into the top 10 largest library members - and took a lot of time to get right. Not only writing the code, but foremost also debugging it.

I hope you will understand why I'm changing my policies. Note I will always be open to contributions from my cherished community.

Hans Bezemer

[The Beez]

Hi 4tH-ers!

Well, now we got AES - let's at least use it. I made a small program that is able to encrypt and decrypt using 256-bit AES encryption. It may perform some padding (AES creates entire buffers) but you may select the padding (zeroes or blanks). I've done some testing and executables, .BMP images as well as .ZIP files don't seem to mind a little (zero) padding. Text files are (of course) no problem - and blanks padding is default.

AESCRYPT.4TH is in SVN.

Hans Bezemer