Sorry to responding so slowly to all the worthwhile suggestions. The press
of work.

As to whether my keyboard works, I genrally use CLI to issue commands
and nano to edit files. No indication of any problems.

I tried to install bewulf an extermal drive attached to an old
machine, but the effort failed. This machine probably iñs set for
legacy in BIOS. There is a boot partition, but that has only a System.map
file in it.

Off hand no luck using vitual keyboard: a) I don't use a desktop
enviropnment. The Florcence application is not available for
installation. matchbox-keyboard is for touchscreen devices.
maliit-keyboard need Malit Frameworl/

The suggestion remined me that years ago when I installed the application
I set the chacater excoding. But The application provides keystrokes to
ennter options, but they do not work. It creasts an empty file in /tmp.

Incidentally, whenever I run nano to create a new file I'm told the file
is already being edited by me, whicn is not the case.

The guide tot application speaks of the possibility of .linesrc configuration
file. I crated it the lines

        codeset=UTF8
        EDITOR=nano

but it had not effect

It was suggested I log into a text console and run it from there. I normally
run things from a mlterm console. That is not a text console. In any case,
dong Clt-Alt F2-6 merely blanked my scree and did not raise a console.
Perhaps that is a useful clue.

I ran it under strace and it returned:

  ...
  close(4)                                = 0
  lseek(3, 0, SEEK_SET)                   = 0
  write(3, "\0\0\0\0\1\0\1\0\0\0\0\0", 12) = 12
  close(3)                                = 0
  --- SIGCONT {si_signo=SIGCONT, si_code=SI_KERNEL} ---
  unlink("/tmp/lltmpr68ql6")              = 0
  clock_nanosleep(CLOCK_REALTIME, 0, {tv_sec=1, tv_nsec=0}, 0x7fffff7b05a0) = 0
  write(1, "\33[24;1H\33[?1049l\33[23;0;0t\r\33[?1l\33>", 32) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
  ioctl(1, TCGETS, 0x7fffff7b0580)        = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
  ioctl(1, SNDCTL_TMR_STOP or TCSETSW, {c_iflag=BRKINT|IGNPAR|ICRNL|IXON,
    c_oflag=NL0|CR0|TAB0|BS0|VT0|FF0|OPOST|ONLCR, c_cflag=B38400|CS8|CREAD,
    c_lflag=ISIG|ICANON|ECHO|ECHOE|ECHOK|IEXTEN|ECHOCTL|ECHOKE, ...})
    = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
  newfstatat(1, "", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0600, st_rdev=makedev(0x88, 0x13), ...}, AT_EMPTY_PATH) = 0
  write(1, "signal 1: HANGUP\n", 17)      = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
  newfstatat(0, "", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0600, st_rdev=makedev(0x88, 0x13), ...}, AT_EMPTY_PATH) = 0
  read(0, "", 1024)                       = 0
  write(1, "\377", 1)                     = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
  exit_group(1)                           = ?
  +++ exited with 1 +++

Does this hint that the problem is not within the application, but
with I/O? The character set option is set to intenal codeset UTC-8
When I go to edit the user options file it just creates an emtpy
file in /tmp but does not open a file I can edit.

I'm to to reach the authors of the application.

--

     Haines Brown