Using: Version 3.1.8-gpg4win-3.1.10
I’m new to gpg and have been doing much reading.
It seems it is a ‘good-idea’ to create sub-keys for the various activities and use those rather then the master key. The advice seems to be to even remove the master key once it is done.
Kleopatra does not seem to have the ability to create or edit these sub-keys (though it does create a type E automatically). ( A post from some time back says it may be added into 3.2.)
In the interim I have used some instructions at https://blog.tinned-software.net/create-gnupg-key-with-sub-keys-to-sign-encrypt-authenticate/ to manually create a sub-key.
It has worked and gpg now lists three:
sec rsa2048/2AF1C90BB8C861E5
created: 2019-10-17 expires: 2024-12-31 usage: SCA
trust: ultimate validity: ultimate
ssb rsa2048/454361BA18AACB57
created: 2019-10-17 expires: 2021-10-17 usage: E
ssb rsa2048/691C4E7F34F01F4A
created: 2019-10-23 expires: 2024-10-21 usage: S
and if I look in my personal Windows private-keys-v1.d folder I see the new file.
GPA also shows the new subkey and its attributes but Kleopatra does not.
Probably not relevant but: Earlier today I did a re-install as I had previously not installed GPA and I could not remove
After the install it prompted me to re-boot (which the original install did not do) but I ignored it as it is not convenient to do so at the moment.