[Bug 116201] Add support of PKCS#11 (Smartcards) into KDE

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------- Additional Comments From alon.barlev gmail com  2007-11-05 12:34 -------
> One of these 12 countries must have a C++ programmer capable of adding
> the support. 

Direct claim => Direct response...

There is no problem in people willing to help. However, adding smartcard support should not imply rewriting the whole TLS/SSL KIO layer for KDE.

Current situation, as I understand as none KDE developer, is that KDE developers did not completely agree which TLS/SSL layer to use now and in recent future.

There are three options:

a. Current OpenSSL implementation of KSSL, which is complex and does not conform to QtNetwork? This implementation is marked as one to be replaced. Any effort of making this support smartcard, may be waisted.

b. Moving to Trolltech's QtSSLSocket implementation. This implementation does not allow many features required by a web browser:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=118119612213249

But mainly, it will *NOT* allow smartcard integration as its private key is forced to be exportable.

We can wait for Trolltech to support smartcards, but I believe this is out of scope for Qt implementation, the proof is the current QtSSLSocket design.

c. Moving to QCA. This option was the one we aimed to. I added smartcard support into QCA for KDE to use it.

So it is not a matter of developer help you require, you need to decide which TLS/SSL implementation you go with for KDE 4.x series, implement a working KIO interface which takes into account that keys are not exportable, and then (if it is possible) maybe someone will help modify this implementation to support smartcards.

I can do this for KSSL and done this for QCA. I am waiting for you to decide so I can help adding this feature (comment#0).