[plasma] Plasma Use Cases

["James Schaad" <[e-mail]>]

I have been thinking about use cases, as well have having a couple of
discussions since the BOF meeting at Prague.  I think that among other
things I would like to see use cases divided into three different classes,
but I want to see multiple cases potentially come out of each of the
classes.

Class #1 - The Email usage case:  These are the cases that I want to have
the Plasma discussions focus on initially.  These are the cases which are
currently (and too briefly) covered in the current requirements draft.

Class #2 - The "easy" extension cases:  This class would include the simple
things that people like PHB brought up at the BOF.  These would include the
ability to do some other simple things.  For example any CMS encrypted file
could use all of the things that are covered in class #1, since S/MIME is
built on top of CMS, but these would require that new or additional UI be
established in something other than a simple mail client.  For example to
encrypt and decrypt files might involve changes/extensions either to a file
system, a file browser or a user application (such as Microsoft Word).

Class #3 - The "hard" extension cases:  There were some questions about how
this could be looked at as a framework rather than as something that is only
for S/MIME or CMS.  Examples of this range as far as how could this be
extended into PGP or the new WOES framework.  I think this set of items is
much more fuzzy, but it seemed to have a large number of people who were
suggesting things along this line.  If that is so then I would like to get
some of these usage cases nailed down in more detail.

Jim