<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">

<chapter>
  <header>
    <copyright>
      <year>2008</year>
      <year>2013</year>
      <holder>Ericsson AB, All Rights Reserved</holder>
    </copyright>
    <legalnotice>
  The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
  Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
  compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
  Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
  retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.

  Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
  basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
  the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
  under the License.

  The Initial Developer of the Original Code is Ericsson AB.
    </legalnotice>

    <title>Introduction</title>
    <prepared>Ingela Anderton Andin</prepared>
    <responsible></responsible>
    <docno></docno>
    <approved></approved>
    <checked></checked>
    <date>2008-01-22</date>
    <rev>A</rev>
    <file>introduction.xml</file>
  </header>

  <section>
    <title>Purpose</title>
    <p> public_key deals with public key related file formats, digital
    signatures and <url href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5280.txt">
    X-509 certificates</url>. It is a library application that
    provides encode/decode, sign/verify, encrypt/decrypt and similar
    functionality, it does not read or write files it expects or returns
    file contents or partial file contents as binaries.
    </p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Prerequisites</title>
    <p>It is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding
    of the concepts of using public keys and digital certificates.</p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <title>Performance tips</title>
    <p>The public_key decode and encode functions will try to use the NIFs
    which are in the ASN1 compilers runtime modules if they can be found.
    So for the best  performance you want to have the ASN1 application in the
    path of your system. </p>
  </section>

</chapter>

