Also been away from this forum for a long bit, got to catch up. What is the current status of the official wallet? Like I said have not been keeping up.
Thanks.
To add to stoffu's post. The secret view key is a, whereas the public view key is A = a*G (G = the basepoint). Note that secret / private keys are commonly called scalars, whereas public keys are referred to as points. The private view key will allow you to decrypt a transaction that was sent to your address, because, as stoffu said, you can perform a*R = D (D is the shared secret) and check whether D == D'. By contrast, the public view key is used for (i) constructing your public address and (ii) generating a shared secret by the sender, i.e., the sender will generate the shared secret r*A = D'. More information can be found here:
https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1230/why-is-the-viewkey-able-to-track-incoming-transactions-but-not-outgoing-transac/
https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1409/constructing-a-stealth-monero-address/
https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/764/how-is-the-one-time-address-generated-from-the-public-address
https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/277/why-are-monero-addresses-so-long/
https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/980/what-are-the-public-viewkeys-and-spendkeys/