+ <para>
+ Note that if usage of <command>apt-key</command> is desired the additional
+ installation of the GNU Privacy Guard suite (packaged in
+ <package>gnupg</package>) is required. For this reason alone the programmatic
+ usage (especially in package maintainerscripts!) is strongly discouraged.
+ Further more the output format of all commands is undefined and can and does
+ change whenever the underlying commands change. <command>apt-key</command> will
+ try to detect such usage and generates warnings on stderr in these cases.
+ </para>
+</refsect1>
+
+<refsect1><title>Supported keyring files</title>
+<para>apt-key supports only the binary OpenPGP format (also known as "GPG key
+ public ring") in files with the "<literal>gpg</literal>" extension, not
+ the keybox database format introduced in newer &gpg; versions as default
+ for keyring files. Binary keyring files intended to be used with any apt
+ version should therefore always be created with <command>gpg --export</command>.
+</para>
+<para>Alternatively, if all systems which should be using the created keyring
+ have at least apt version >= 1.4 installed, you can use the ASCII armored
+ format with the "<literal>asc</literal>" extension instead which can be
+ created with <command>gpg --armor --export</command>.
+</para>