James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org> typed:
: How the character is ultimately interpreted and acted on is up to the
: application.  For instance, bash(1) will render your delete key as a
: tilde, but vi won't. 

It's not just a tilde.  See my related message in port-i386 (where the
previous mail was crossposted even though it's not i386 specific)

:                       And neither of them understands dead keys.  Cf.
: http://wauug.erols.com/~balsa/linux/deadkeys/.  

They have no business understanding dead keys.  That's not their role.

: It might be possible to do it right; Linux seems to.  I played with it for
: awhile tonight, but I can't get bash to tell me its name for what arrives
: when I press Delete.  Not knowing the name, I can't map it to delete-char.

When you have a key which is producing a sequence you can't work out, it may
be because the shell is interpreting the result.  You need to quote it to
see what's happening.  The easiest way in most shells is usually by pressing
CTRL-V (makes the next character quoted) then press the key.  For more
complex sequences it's easy enough to pause the shell processing then press
the key, e.g. (type in the sleep command, press return, then press the key):
% sleep 60
^[[3~

shows me that delete produced "^[" "[" "3" "~"

"^[" is the common display for escape.
 
Regards,
-- 
Geoff Wing : <gcw@pobox.com>
Rxvt Stuff : <gcw@rxvt.org>
Zsh Stuff  : <gcw@zsh.org>