pinentry-qt and on-screen keyboards

[Stuart Longland]

Hi all,

I recently bought a second hand Panasonic Toughpad FZ-G1 which is a 
tablet form-factor PC.  I've loaded it with Debian 12 using the KDE 
Plasma desktop (using X11 for now) and have `xvkbd` set up as a virtual 
keyboard.

It is important to note this machine has a single USB (USB3 type A) port 
and *NO* hardware keyboard beyond a couple of macro buttons on the bezel.

pinentry, it seems, does not get along with xvkbd.  When I need to 
unlock a private key, pinentry (I'm using pinentry-qt) blocks input 
events from all other applications, including xvkbd.  I'm not sure the 
situation would change if I used something else.

While I can understand this on a standard keyboard-equipped computer in 
normal circumstances, doing it on a touchscreen-driven tablet is 
ridiculous.  I basically cannot use GnuPG at all on this computer unless 
my keys are stored without a passphrase, which is demonstrably worse 
security than pinentry preventing input to other applications.

Is there a way to relax this restriction?
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
   ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.