.TH PINENTRY-CURSES 1 "27 Jan 2005"
.SH NAME
pinentry\-curses \- PIN or pass-phrase entry dialog for GnuPG
.PP
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBpinentry-curses\fB [\fIOPTION\fR...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBpinentry\-curses\fR is a program that allows for secure entry of PINs or
pass phrases.  That means it tries to take care that the entered
information is not swapped to disk or temporarily stored anywhere.
This functionality is particularly useful for entering pass phrases
when using encryption software such as GnuPG or e-mail clients using
the same.  It uses an open protocol and is therefore not tied to
particular software.
.PP
\fBpinentry-curses\fR implements a PIN entry dialog
using the curses tool kit, meaning that it is useful for users working
in text mode without the X Window System.  There are other flavors
that implement PIN entry dialogs that use an X tool kit.  If you
have installed any of the latter programs then this program is not necessary
because the X flavors automatically fall back to text mode if
X is not active.
.PP
\fBpinentry\-curses\fR is typically used internally by \fBgpg-agent\fR.
Users don't normally have a reason to call it directly.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
Print the program version and licensing information.
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line options.
.TP
\fB\-\-debug\fR, \fB\-d\fR
Turn on some debugging.  Mostly useful for the maintainers.  Note
that this may reveal sensitive information like the entered pass phrase.
.TP
\fB\-\-enhanced\fR, \fB\-e\fR
Ask for timeouts and insurance, too.  Note that this is currently
not fully supported.
.TP
\fB\-\-no\-global\-grab\fR, \fB\-g\fR
Grab the keyboard only when the window is focused.  Use this
option if you are debugging software using \fBpinentry\-curses\fR;
otherwise you may not be able to to access your X session anymore (unless
you have other means to connect to the machine to kill
\fBpinentry\-curses\fR).
.TP
\fB\-\-parent\-wid\fR \fIN\fR
Use window ID \fIN\fR as the parent window for positioning the window.
Note, that this is not fully supported by all flavors of \fBpinentry\fR.
.TP
\fB--display\fR \fISTRING\fR, \fB--ttyname\fR \fISTRING\fR, \fB--ttytype\fR \fISTRING\fR, \fB--lc-ctype\fR \fISTRING\fR, \fB--lc-messages\fR \fISTRING\fR
These options are used to pass localization information to
\fBpinentry-curses\fR.  They are required because
\fBpinentry-curses\fR is usually called by
some background process which does not have any information on the
locale and terminal to use.  Assuan protocol options are an
alternative way to pass these information.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR pinentry-gtk-2 (1),
.BR pinentry-qt (1),
.BR pinentry-fltk (1),
.BR pinentry-gnome3 (1),
.BR pinentry-tty (1),
.BR gpg (1),
.BR gpg-agent (1)
.PP
The full documentation for
.B pinentry-curses
is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the
.B pinentry-doc
package is installed, the command
.IP
.B info pinentry
.PP
should give you access to the complete manual.
.SH AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Peter Eisentraut for the Debian project.