How many function keys are usable in Ubuntu 8.10 terminals?
I need 40 fks, for compatibility with an old RM Cobol package which I am porting from Dos to Linux.
There are the first 20 fks (F1--F10 and ShiftF1--ShiftF10) out-of-the-box, but I am not able to have the other 20 fks (CtrlF1--CtrlF10 and AltF1--AltF10) working.
I tried whith:
- Loadkeys, using codes following the existing ones (for CtrlF1, Esc[35~; CtrlF2, Esc[36~; and so on), and I see them with Showkey -a;
- I use TERM=linux whith similarly modified terminfo (and I see it with infocmp; by the way, is there a way to see if terminfo translation occurs, that is, to see "kf21" when I press CtrlF1?);
- the .CFG files of RM Cobol are OK (they expect 63 possible function keys, from kf1 to kf63);
= but Cobol does not receive them, when I press one of these function keys I see just a ~, and the variable which should contain the number of the key remains void.
I use LANG=it_IT.ISO-8859-1.
Any help would be appreciated,
(Apologies for my English)

Something like this?
http://ubuntufs.wordpress.com/2008/0...nearly-sorted/

No, thanks, I understand that fsfn is a package to 'put at work' specifically the FN+function keys of the 'laptops'.
But I need the 'desktop' keyboard function keys, for compatibility reasons with a package which is in use in the DOS version by hundreds of persons all over Italy (so I can't re-train them to the use of different keys).
I appreciate the effort to help me.

You may find xev and xmodmap helpful.

Thanks (really interesting) ...but I am on console, not on X-terminal...