Keymaps in virtual consoles.

[Mats Erik Andersson <debian@gisladisker.se>]

Dear all,

I need to return to the annoying matter of non-en_US keymaps
for use in virtual keyboards. As a typical case is a desire
to be able to use scandinavian vowels in a virtual consoles,
which are present on the keyboard, and are in fact the the
only keys not working properly. Remember that this is no
problem in X-terminals.

On FreeBSD the matter is elementary:

   ## /etc/rc.conf

   keymap="swedish.iso.kbd"

In summary, I can arrange this with equal, or less difficult,
mechanisms with DragonFly, FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
OpenIndiana, and Solaris 11.

On GNU/kFreeBSD hower, all efforts fail, even rendering many
localized system messages into ridicule. The init script "kbdcontrol"
modifies the backspace, but it seems inapt to set a non-american
keyboard to proper use. Is there some description of another
already existing mechanism that needs to be brought into light,
or is "setconsole" broken on GNU/kFreeBSD?

Rather, I suspect the screen fonts to be incomplete. But they are
complete in FreeBSD, so why not also in GNU/kFreeBSD.

Best regards,
  Mats E Andersson, DM