scim and pinentry-gtk2

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:02:08 -0500,
Robby Workman <rw at rlworkman.net> wrote:
> 
> Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > At Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:46:02 -0600,
> > Robby Workman <rw at rlworkman.net> wrote:
> >> To make a long story short, pinentry-gtk2 doesn't receive keyboard
> >> input when scim is being used.  This has previously been reported
> >> to both Ubuntu and OpenSuSE, and after scim and friends were recently
> >> added to Slackware, we're seeing it there.
> >>
> >>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pinentry/+bug/176815
> >>
> >>    https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=330073#c5
> >>
> >> Any idea what's at fault?
> > 
> > pinentry grabs the keyboard and the screen by default (there is an
> > option to switch it off).  Maybe scim doesn't work well with that?
> 
> 
> Hi Marcus,
> 
> Sorry for the delay - I've unfortunately been short on time lately.
> 
> Starting gpg-agent with the --no-grab option has no effect.
> This is quite annoying for users who need alternate input methods,
> especially scim.  Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but here's
> how it appears to me:
> 
> 1.  Pinentry is a GTK+ app.
> 2.  GTK+ apps can use GTK+ input methods.
> 3.  Rather than using an input method, pinentry grabs the raw input.
> 
> I understand that there are perhaps security concerns with not
> grabbing raw input, but surely there's a way to fix this?
> pinentry-qt handles this just fine, btw...

If it can be implemented without linking to any more libraries, I
would suggest a command line option to enable external input methods.

If more libraries are required, or if there is a slippery slope
towards more GNOME/Gtk compliance, it might make sense to provide two
separate versions of pinentry: A hardened version based on the current
code, and a weakened version that does not make extra efforts to be
secure, but instead complies to a multitude of GUI standards.

How does this sound?

Thanks,
Marcus