Resetting Your Keyboard Map

If you see unexpected characters and behaviors, or characters cannot be displayed or typed, you might need to reset or install your keyboard map or change your input method.

The input method is determined by the LC_CTYPE, LANG, or LC_ALL environment variables, or the language specified by the -lang option.

For example, if the user wants to open a terminal with the C locale within a POSIX shell:

LANG=C   dtterm

This new terminal uses the C locale including the C input method and fonts. If you are using a language-specific keyboard, the input method may not accept any extended characters for input. When using the C locale with a language-specific keyboard, users need to set the LC_CTYPE (or LANG or LC_ALL) environment variable to an appropriate value before invoking the terminal.

For example, to use the C locale with the German keyboard, type:

LANG=C LC_CTYPE=DeDE dtterm

If the X server has been reset and keymaps have been initialized, you can reset the proper keyboard map at the server using the txmodmap command.