What did you add to the /etc/rc.local file.
I don’t understand your link, as it redirects to a post where I mention ÆØÅ characters not showing up as the only thing not working.
Your post isn’t really clear on what you are trying to say 
Are you just mentioning that you tried it out or have you found a solution for special characters?
loadkeys /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwertz/de-latin1-nodeadkeys.kmap.gz
thats the line i added to /etc/rc.local
afaik you where the one telling us about that, am i correct with my assumption?
the redirect shouldve worked, i clicked on the “share a link to this post” icon within discourse… but whatever…
Ah yes that post 
it’s post 23 and the post you link to is 26 that’s why i got confused
just the way you wrote it, it sounded like you’ve found a solution for special characters
well, i havent had a chance to really test it, because all my “special chars” for typing are more rudimentary i think (äöü€), but theres a packet which is actually named unicode-data you might wanna install that and see if you get em working correctly afterwards…
@DBMandrake: Perhaps there is a missunderstanding. I meant sad regarding the great work the team has done with OMSC. And of course nobody will estimate, that you buy something or solve individual problems not interresting for the mainstream.
What I wanted to say is the same opinion of you, that there are are a lot of users and perhaps there should be some of them with linux know how, who were able to help. As I mentioned, I have none. I tried my best with the hints I found here form @geekgarage and what I found with google. But I failed - I’m a poor windows user…
If I find any way, of course I will tell the solution to do my little part to this great project.
Hey there,
i just wanted to report, that in my spare freetime, im still trying to solve this issue!
meanwhile i setup an ArchLinux distro on pi and read alot about keylayouts etc.
other distro same problem:
general keyboard layout switch seems to work in Kodi: like Z and Y is exchanged, but special chars are not printed in a search dialoge for example.
Same problem here with any startX desktop environment. i could solve this issue, in Desktop environments its working, also with special language chars.
its working in desktop enviroment only if im setting the locales with the localectl deamon.
STILL:
no effect in Kodi!
This issue doesn’t seem for me osmc releated anymore.
Probably its the way Kodi gets access to the keyboard or is switching the virtual keyboard layout.
From Arch wiki i know: i had to use a udev-rule to allow kodi to use my physical keyboard in Kodi. Maybe Kodi is not allowed to switch the virtual keyboard layout?
i will report asap when i got more results =)
Hi there,
This would be helpful. Please send me an email at sam@osmc.tv so we can arrange this.
I am keen to get this issue resolved for users.
Sam
ok it seems like the scancodes are not mapped in kodi!
in kodi.log i can see that keypress of ö has the scancode 0x27 and the symlink 0x00f6
its the same issue like here: scancode fails
for sure its kodi related and not osmc! 
Hi boys… here:
https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/stupid-question-italian-qwerty-layout/11114/2
I have found and edit the main .xml file and create a newest file working for virtual keyboard inside KODI (installed on my Rpi2).
On a USB Port i have also connected a Italian Qwerty keyboard… and apparently there’s no mode to choose/use the correct layout… for example:
On English/Default QWERTY-> SHIFT + 2 → We Obtain → @
On Italian QWERTY Layout → Same SHIFT + 2 → We Obtain → "
I try to use from SSH Session:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
And create and select the Italian UTF-8… all it’s working but only on SSH session. Inside KODI it’s continue to be used the wrong english qwerty layout…
Exactly, thats where we all stuck now. The virtual keyboard is working but only with Mouse clicks and doesn’t take all physical key presses because kodi has not registered all keycodes. You can test and see it in debugging mode and open the kodi
Log.
mmmmm i can try… but i thinks that xml i created and loaded it’s been used only when VirtualKeyboard it’s loaded…
If you thinks it’s usefull i can upload and host here…i’m not a really understand how i need to do whit debugging activated 
I’m still waiting on an afflicted keyboard, but I’m confident that once I receive one (which should be soon) we can fix this issue.
Sam
German Keyboard also dossnt work.
Selected it in Kodi but its still english layout
You do not need another keyboard for that.
Take a look here how it works with scan codes. [url]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout[/url]
The physical keys are just remapped to other characters.
For Example:
If you press on your physical english keyboard the :; (key right from the letter L) and you set up a german keyboard layout then it should print the umlaut ö. But kodi does not recognize these scancodes and can’t map it correctly. So Kodi is not printing anything.
But this is working on the console!
If you press on your physical keyboard the / the console and also KODI is printing with the german layout the minus ( - )
So kodi is taking most of the german layout but if you record everything in the debugmodus, you can see that kodi does not have the scancodes mapped for the Umlauts ä ö ü
EDIT:
To get at least some parts of the german keyboard layout working in kodi, you have to generate the de_de.utf8 character set and configure in console the german keyboard layout as described above in this discussion.
Yep, i know that you don’t need a physical keyboard to test this, as i’ve stated in a previous comment 
But the devs seems to want a physical keyboard before they are going to see if they can fix it, or they still haven’t realized it after my long post about testing without a special keyboard, but a physical keyboard they are going to get but first in the new year, money is tight this month (ofc it depends on how much it’s going to cost as postage prices in Denmark are through the roof)
Remember it worked back when it was named RaspBMC
I don’t know your state but here, in italy, i can buy a BASIC and “stupid” usb italian qwerty keyboard at less of 5€
if you actually read my post I stated that the price for POSTAGE (sending from my country to another) is through the roof. I said nothing about the keyboard price as i already have one laying around.
Same problem with Russian layout.
Norwegian keyboard also not working (guess not a big surprise though)
I guess the best fix is to get a english keyboard and go back to using aa=å, ae=æ and oe=ø + english format dates. Takes too much time to set up the nationals/keyboards right these days (both to make it work in the codes and trying to configure it)…
Or maybe all need to learn Chinese soon 
Sorry for necroposting, but this is still an issue, and I find this to be the best and most logical place to provide a solution.
After over 3 days of trying and failing to fix this problem I have finally found a solution that worked for me. Before this, I had already tried to use every solution I could find on the wide web. To clarify:
Setup: ASUS laptop X73TA with Kodi 16.1 (Jarvis) with Kodibuntu running on Ubuntu 14.04.
Problem: Virtual keyboard and terminal works fine with my Norwegian keyboard, and provides correct output. Inside Kodi however, my keyboard acts as a US-keyboard.
Solutions tried: “setxkbmap” (works in desktop-/Lubuntu-mode, but not in Kodi), “dpkg-reconfigure locals”, “dpkg-reconfigure console-data”, “dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration” and every combination of settings with regards to language, locale, keyboard layout, and the like.
Solution: “loadkeys”. To solve this, I had to use the loadkeys command from the terminal in Kodi-mode (not in Lubuntu). You can enter this by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1-6 (CTRL+ALT+F7 to get back to Kodi).
For a one-time fix:
sudo loadkeys no (replace “no” with your relevant layout, eg. de-latin1 for German or dk-latin1 for Danish).Loading /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/no.kmap.gz, or something similar.For a permanent fix (runs on startup):
loadkeys no-latin1 (or use any other method to get a shell command to run on startup, eg. systemd or init.d, depending on your system).I hope this works for others than me. I give no guarantees that this solution will work for you, but at least it did for me, so I hope it does for you too!
NB: Sometimes, it seems you need to input “no-latin1”, while other times “no” does the trick. I do not know why.