displaying decrypted plaintext on screen instead of output to file

[vedaal at nym.hush.com]

On Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:02:32 -0400 Daniel Kahn Gillmor 
<dkg at fifthhorseman.net> wrote:
>On 09/08/2011 02:54 PM, vedaal at nym.hush.com wrote:
>> Is there an option in gnupg like the '-m' option in pgp which 
>> allows the display of decrypted plaintext on the screen instead 
>of 
>> saving to file, 

> gpg --encrypt --armor -r $recipient
>
> (then type your message, and end with a ctrl-D after the last 
>newline)

-----

can't get it to work,

this is what happens (using cygwin on winxp):

First, with your suggestion:

$ gpg --encrypt --armor -r testkey just a test
gpg: WARNING: using insecure memory!
gpg: please see http://www.gnupg.org/faq.html for more information
usage: gpg [options] --encrypt [filename]

then trying,

$ gpg --encrypt --armor -r testkey 'just a test'
gpg: WARNING: using insecure memory!
gpg: please see http://www.gnupg.org/faq.html for more information
gpg: can't open `just a test': No such file or directory
gpg: just a test: encryption failed: file open error

then trying,

$ gpg --encrypt --armor -o c:/ptt.asc -r testkey 'just a test'
gpg: WARNING: using insecure memory!
gpg: please see http://www.gnupg.org/faq.html for more information
gpg: can't open `just a test': No such file or directory
gpg: just a test: encryption failed: file open error

then, just as a control, which did work,

$ gpg -r testkey -o c:/f2.asc -a -e c:/f1.txt
gpg: WARNING: using insecure memory!
gpg: please see http://www.gnupg.org/faq.html for more information

as expected, gnupg produced f2.asc as the desired ciphertext, but 
only by encrypting the plaintext in the input file f1.txt

If you, (or anyone else here), were able to get this to work, could 
you please list all the steps and the gpg output?

Thanks!

vedaal