Just for information:
The gnupg version does allow .asc output.
As a workaround I created a batch file consisting of the lines

cd /D %~dp1
gpg --encrypt -a -r myname@myserver.com -r yourname@yourserver.com --output %~nx1.asc %~nx1

and put it in the windows sendto folder.

If you create a file without -a the standard suffix will be .asc. But if you use -o FILE, just must give the full filename..

I'm not sure this is what you are looking for, but in Kleopatra latest version (3.0.0-gpg4win-3.0.0), it is possible to use ascii armor by default in all encryptions:
Make sure you check the following options in settings:
Settings > Configure Kleopatra > Crypto operations > Create signed or encrypted files as text files

Regards

This is exactly what I was looking for --> Settings > Configure Kleopatra > Crypto operations > Create signed or encrypted files as text files
Thanks!

@aheinecke , Would you consider re-opening this ticket?

Fairly typical situation: user needs to encrypt binary and text regularly. Just adding "Armour" checkbox will help tremendously as it would save user from changing Kleopatra settings on each run.

If there are (legitimate) concerns this can jeopardize UX for novice users - checkbox can be named "Save as text" with more elaborate explanation provided in the tooltip.

Hi @asv

Fairly typical situation: user needs to encrypt binary and text regularly

I'll always consider re-opening a ticket or changing something in the interface if I think that this would be the best solution for a use case.
Can you help me please to understand why you think that this is a regular use case?

My design is that you use Kleopatra File encryption mostly for binary files, like a docx or a pdf or something. Even for .txt if you send it as a file IMO there is no ASCII armor required.

The use case I see for ASCII Armor is for small text that you then want to copy & paste somewhere (where ASCII Armor is indeed required) I thought that the "Notepad view" of Kleopatra is the better choice for that instead of having users work with files if they just want to copy & paste.

Thanks,
andre

Can you help me please to understand why you think that this is a regular use case?

Absolutely! On *nix system, one can quickly gpg2 --encrypt-files to produce binary output or gpg2 --armour to save as text.
While users of Windows system are normally accustomed to the visual paradigm: "everything is done via UI" and having to open shell specifically for GPG doesn't quite fit in the regular routine.

"Clipboard" functionality is nice, however it assumes that:

1. Source file is valid ASCII (what about Unicode extension?)
2. It is sufficiently small and can by copy-pasted comfortably.

I would carefully advocate for inclusion of the above-mentioned checkbox, e.g: