# How to render "£" in the console with a uk (cp850 or iso) ke



## ivan_llaisdy (Feb 15, 2014)

Dear *a*ll,

I have just installed freebsd FreeBSD 10.0 onto an old Thinkpad _X_60.  I am taking it slowly to make sure all the details are right. The laptop has a _CP_ 850 keyboard.  This is working correctly in the terminal apart from two keys which show a character value instead of rendering.  Setting the keyboard to uk.iso (with kbdmap) changes the value shown:

```
[as root]        [as ivan]
    key        want    cp850     iso    cp850     iso
    shift-3       £     \234    \243    <009c>    <00a3>
    shift-`       ¬     \252    \254    <00aa>    <00ac>
```

The values displayed also differ depending on the login (ivan is logged in with zsh).  Ivan's displayed values are the character codes for the expected characters.

Changing the keymap or font --- either with kbdmap and vidfont, or by editing /etc/rc.conf and rebooting --- seems to have no effect.

The only relevant-looking screenmap I have is iso-8859-1_to_cp437.scm.  Adding this to /etc/rc.conf and reebooting has no effect.

Am I missing a screenmap?  If so, which ones do I need and where can I get them?

Is there anything else I should be doing to get this keyboard rendering properly?

It would be acceptable if root's console keyboard was limited.

With thanks and best wishes,

Ivan


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## mdl90 (Aug 30, 2016)

I have a similar problem.

After running `setxkbmap - layout gb` '¬'  and '£' render in x applications firefox, libreoffice but not in xterm (whether sh, csh, or tcsh).

Instead I get \254 and \243 respectively.


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## SirDice (Aug 30, 2016)

Please have a look here: Handbook: Chapter 22. Localization - i18n/L10n Usage and Setup


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## scottro (Aug 30, 2016)

FreeBSD-10.3.  Running `setxkbmap gb` enables me to input the £ sign in terminal (urxvt and xterm) and firefox.  Those were the only two that I checked. This is with a US keyboard, using what, with mapping set at US, is the # sign, shift+3.


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## mdl90 (Aug 30, 2016)

I needed to log out from X. `cap_mkdb ~/.login_conf` did not seem to have an effect.


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