The operating system locale is different from the X locale.
So, if you chose utf-8 in X, and
if your applications support utf-8, you should have no problem re-reading the the filenames correctly with another application supporting utf-8.
On xterm or on the CLI, when you ls, you will read the names of the filesystem in a 8-bit raw format.
This is ASCII-7bit, which is a subset of utf-8, and and 8th bit containing extended characters. These depend on the OS set locale (.profile, .login, ... etc).
From stock, X (and xenocara) now include luit (man luit) which act as a filter between two character sets. Could help you, even on the CLI.
Also, xterm can be called as uxterm for unicode environments.
Many other graphical terminals are Unicode and|or UTF-8 aware.
Basically, if you stay under a window manager with utf-8 aware applications, your display should be correct.
Here are some links to utf-8 patches (OS and file system)
http://web.archive.org/web/200406041...tch-src_citrus
http://sigsegv.s25.xrea.com/distfiles/citrus/OpenBSD/
If you use GNOME
The xkb definitions now are under /etx/X11/xkb but gnome seems to be searching under
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb
you might need to
ln -s /etc/X11/xkb /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb
the get the keyboard indicator applet
Just rememner that OS and file system locales are different from Xorg and xlocales.