You might be supprised to know that your X Windows system can handle, by default, the typing of a wide range of characters that aren't generally found on your keyboard. Before I go on I have to say that I am in the UK and thus use a UK keyboard. Some of the characters I can type aren't found on my keyboard but if you are reading this ourside the UK they may be on yours. Further more, the characters you can type are dependent on the keymap currently in use. For instance I could set my keyboard up to use say Chinese symbols and then I wouldn't be able to type any English symbols. This guide will show you how to print out the keymap for your curent display.

First open a shell and enter the command

xkbcomp -xkm $DISPLAY

this will create a file in the directory in which it is run called something like "server-0_0.xkm" which is the X keyboard map for your current display. This file is needed in order to generate the printable keyboard map file.

Now taking the file from above run it though this command

xkbprint -eps -color -fit -ll 2 -level2 server-0_0.xkm server-0_0.eps

which will give you an eps file showing the basic keymapings that you can use. Alternativly you can also perform the above two steps in a single step using

xkbprint -eps -color -fit -ll 2 -level2 $DISPLAY server-0_0.eps

If you want to change your locale such that it is using UTF-8 and able to send extended characters correctly then you need to do the following.

First run

dpkg-reconfigure locales

and select a UTF-8 locale from the list. Then you need to add the following two lines to /etc/profile

export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8

You will need to log out and log back in to ensure that these get read. Finally check that everything is ok by opening a console and running the command

locale

Which should give out put looking something like this

LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=en_GB.UTF-8

If it doesn't first try logging in as yourself again at the command prompt with "su - username" because you may be using a non-login shell (this is probably true if you are using konsole). You might also want to read this page.