Does anyone know how to get the terminal font back when, for whatever reason it starts displaying squares and odd characters?

For instance, right after one accidentally "less"es a binary. Usually I just logout of that terminal and use a different one and it always goes away upon rebooting, but I'm curious about this?

I guess it has something to do with hitting control-C after a read program has changed the font of the terminal to display certain characters. But is there a way to get it back or a patch for the terminal situation that makes control-c restore the previous font or... I don't know... I've just always wondered about this.

You can try 'reset' command. Sometimes works.

Yeah, thanks, I should have done that. Right after posting, I did "apropos terminal" and found "reset", but tried running it from another terminal with /dev/tty1 and then guessing at the "vt100" or whatever terminal type when asked. Eventually I gave up and rebooted.

But next time it happens, I'll try reset from the terminal itself. I don't know why I didn't try it from the terminal itself then.

I always ask these dumb questions that I could figure out if I took five minutes to do, except when I do take the five minutes I think its more complicated than it is and give up because I don't want to figure out what the terminal type is. But yeah... running it from the terminal itself... why didn't I think of that.

Hard to do when it's a "getty" (login-prompt), afaik.