If you’re having issues with the BeOS keymap for your particular language, you may be able to edit it to better suit your needs. To load any keymap, type:
keymap -l mapname.map
There are a number of alternate keymaps downloadable from BeWare and BeBits.
Because keymapping can be a complex issue, there’s a dedicated mailing list set up for people with keymap issues. To subscribe, send a message to listserv@listserv.snakelegs.com with the following in the body of the message:
subscribe BEOS-KEYMAPS Your Name
Replace ‚Your Name‘, of course, with your name.
To subscribe via web-browser, visit: http://listserv.snakelegs.com – main page, or, http://listserv.snakeleg s.com/beos-keymaps.html – BeOS-Keymaps Page

What follows are the original contents of this tip.In the „Keymap“ app, you can, besides picking a keymap, change the mapping yourself. You can either drag a key onto another with the second mouse button, and hence copy it there, or you can drag a text clipping (max one character long!**) onto a key. Holding down a modifier-key while dragging, you can reach all possible positions. The only things you can’t change with this is the modifier-key locations, the „dead“ key flag (I couldn’t anyways), and maybe some other obscure keys (my „|< >“ keys for example:(). There is a german keymap on beware though that puts alt_gr right and puts |, < and > on the „correct“ positions.If you are adventurous, you can dump the current keymap with „keymap -d>filename“, and edit it, it’s actually readable. After you have applied your feared physical-key-to-hex skills (it gives clues for most keys), you just do „keymap -l<filename“, and you have a home-made keymap!
Also, „keymap -r“ restores the keymap to default, but I fail to see the usefulness of this, since if you need to use it, you probably can’t type it in:).
** I assigned „lala“ to my ‚q‘ key, and when I pressed it, it actually printed „lala“, but it seemed to corrupt the keymap and mouse. However, I’ve been unable to reproduce this behaviour, so it may be safe assigning strings > 1 character in length to keys.