console characters/keyboard

[Aaron Peterson]

On 12/8/05, Glenn Dawson <glenn at antimatter.net> wrote:
> At 07:17 PM 12/7/2005, Aaron Peterson wrote:
> >I have been working with a database recently that contained values
> >with special characters.  A lower case "n" with a tilde over it for
> >instance.  Anyway, during the conversion of the database from mysql to
> >sqlite these special characters got corrupted.  I ended up fixing them
> >by hand since there weren't many, but during the process I realized
> >these things:
> >
> >1) My console does not print these characters, but empty box
> >characters instead
> >
> >2) I have no good way of entering these characters (that I know of)
> >with my standard keyboard layout and language settings.
> >
> >So the obvious questions follow:
> >
> >1) Can I somehow alter my console or add fonts so these characters are
> >displayed properly
> >
> >2) I ended up writing a perl program and giving it html entities to
> >decode back to the special character and insert into the database, but
> >this is very roundabout.  How can I set my FreeBSD box up to be able
> >to enter such characters manually?
>
> You can produce whatever character you like by using the alt key and
> the number pad.
>
> Hold down alt and type the ascii value (in base 10) on the number
> pad.  When you release the alt key, the character will be sent as if
> it had been typed.  Note that this only works with the number pad.

I suppose keeping Xorg from intercepting these key combinations and
doing nothing with them is more complicated...  (I just get beeps, no
characters) Any clues on that?

Aaron