PGP

I am only new to PGP and I just have a question about how it works. I was wondering why is a hashing algorithm used as part of the process that produces a signed plain text message? Also what are the essential properties of the hashing algorithm used, that enable this use?

Thanks in advance
Mel

I direct you here for the answer to those questions instead of rambling a bunch of technical jargon. I find my explinations just confuse people even more than when the question was asked :
http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/

Besides...this one has purdy pictures hehe

Especially check out the answer to Digial signatures and Hash functions which should answer your questions.

Oh, and for more documentation on PGP, just go here:

http://www.pgpi.org/doc/
There's everything you should ever need. A more detailed explination of the hash algorithm can be found under the "Specification and standards documents" as this leads to a few RFCs