Software How to do special characters in the tty terminals ?


PowerGod

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When I use a terminal outside of the the Window Manager, with CTRL+ALT+F3 for example, all the special characters are not working, the ones you get with the "Fn" button pressed.

How can I type them ?

I'm especially missing the tilde and mostly the pipe :(

Is this something that could be solved with some future patch ?

(By the way, I love to be finally able to switch terminals like this... on the Pandora it was so tricky...)

EDIT:

After playing a bit with the keys I'm starting to find how to do some of them, but are in weird positions:

~ = Fn+Shift+1 (or every other number less than 9)
? = Fn+Shift+.
+ = Fn+Shift+Z
_ = Fn+Shift+X
| = Fn+Shift+B (FINALLY !!)

... at some point I will try to find all the others
 
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i can't even always do special characters in window managers. so i have stuff like this in my bashrc:
Code:
export GBP=£
I know. I should be shot.
 
I just found another strange thing ... this happens only on Firefox (from Debian repo), the underscore "_" doesn't work from its main key and must be written with SHIFT+FN+X

All the other FN characters that I tried were working ok ... that seemed the only one working in a different position ...
 
Always had this behavior, not only with firefox. You may find a solution here:
 
I think it's because of the mapping of the modifier keys (shift(s)/control(s)/super(s)/meta(s)) and how they are a little broken at the moment.

I have no solution (made not much time trying to fix things), but:

xmodmap -pm

For me it shows this, and as you can see too many keys can generate too many modX:
Bash:
fbnil@deucalion:~$ xmodmap -pm
xmodmap:  up to 4 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x42)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  ISO_Level3_Shift (0x6c),  underscore (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3    
mod4        Mode_switch (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c),  acute (0xcb)


Shows that "mod1" (modifier set 1) hijacks 3 keys, which strangely includes the underscore

Here's some documentation that might get you going:

Compare that to a vanilla Debian13 PC installation:

Bash:
$ xmodmap -pm
xmodmap:  up to 4 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x42)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_L (0xcc),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3        ISO_Level5_Shift (0xcb)
mod4        Super_L (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c)


Now note that if you connect a USB keyboard, the settings are still very functional, so you should not go all out.

These are non-permanent changes (everything will be back after a reboot, so you can just play around):

Make shifted ? write an upside-down one. In the same way you can redefine Q, W or R to print a Yen or Pound.
xmodmap -e "keycode 93 = a A question questiondown"

xmodmap -e "clear mod1"
xmodmap -e "clear mod4"
xmodmap -e "clear mod5"


xmodmap -e "add mod4 = Shift_L"
xmodmap -e "add mod4 = Hyper_L"

# After unassigning Shift_L I was able to Make shift emit a Super_key (so I could fat-press Fn and shift keys and get compose)
xmodmap -e "keysym Shift_L = Super_R"


not in that order, but something like that.
 
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