Just in case anyone is interested I found an answer. After muddling thru all the modules, and seeing how it was done, I decided to get the latest version of gpg ( 1.4.1) and look thru the docs for a new option called --command-fd which is a file descriptor which gpg will use to accept commands in a --no-tty mode. It works. :-)
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use IPC::Open3;
local $SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';
local $SIG{PIPE} = 'IGNORE';
my $childpid = open3(\*IN, \*OUT, \*ERR,
'gpg -v --no-greeting --no-tty --command-fd 0 --status-fd 1 --e
+dit zentara');
print IN "trust\n5\ny\n";
close IN;
my(@answer,@err);
@answer = <OUT>;
print "out->@answer\n";
@err = <ERR>;
print "err->@err\n";
I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
flash japh