Typing characters doesn't show up on display monitor while typing

[Shivkumar]

Hey Guys,

I have noticed that sometime during typing on hpux 11i Xterminal, typing characters are not visible due to some mistake while typing on the key board. I believe it is due to pressing some key sequence unknowingly which causes characters not to display on the terminal.

Can anyone suggest what key sequence cause not to display typing characters on the monitor and how to revert it back ?

Thanks,
Shiv

[RAC_1]

stty -a

Check stop and start
Default is ctrl S and ctrl Q

Anil

[Steven E. Protter]

Make sure the keyboard has some lights on it. The keyboard may be in troulbe as well.

SEP

[Bill Hassell]

It turns out that Xterminals don't know anything about text on the screen. What happens on an Xterminal is that you "borrow" terminal emulators from servers, xterm or hpterm or dtterm. So each emulator has specific codes that can change the characteristics of the display (invert colors, underline, flashing, etc). But the specific codes depend on what emulator you are using. The window title bar at the top should tell you. You can also get a list of specific sequences by doing this:

untic

This command shows all the special sequences that the terminal recognizes. The vast majority of terminal emulators recognize the ESC (escape) key as the start of a special sequence. Normally, you would not be using this key except in something like vi.

Now I am assmuming that the characters you type are still seen by the computer, that they are just not visible on the screen. This might happen if the colors pair set for a particular text enhancement are the same. That is, a bold enhancment set blue letters on a blue background.

Now as to what characters got you to this condition and what it will take to get out...that is more difficult. You'll need to track down just what character string will cause the problem. Then use untic to locate the string and man terminfo to read about terminal control sequences.