KEYMAPS(5)



KEYMAPS(5)                    File Formats Manual                   KEYMAPS(5)

NAME
       keymaps - keyboard table descriptions for loadkeys and dumpkeys

DESCRIPTION
       These  files  are  used by loadkeys(1) to modify the translation tables
       used by the kernel keyboard driver and generated  by  dumpkeys(1)  from
       those translation tables.

       The  format  of  these  files is vaguely similar to the one accepted by
       xmodmap(1).  The file consists of charset or key or  string  definition
       lines interspersed with comments.

       Comments are introduced with !  or # characters and continue to the end
       of the line. Anything following one of these characters on that line is
       ignored.  Note  that  comments  need  not begin from column one as with
       xmodmap(1).

       The syntax of keymap files is line oriented; a complete definition must
       fit on a single logical line. Logical lines can, however, be split into
       multiple physical lines by ending each subline with the backslash char-
       acter (\).

INCLUDE FILES
       A keymap can include other keymaps using the syntax

              include "pathname"

CHARSET DEFINITIONS
       A character set definition line is of the form:

              charset "iso-8859-x"

       It  defines  how following keysyms are to be interpreted.  For example,
       in iso-8859-1 the  symbol  mu  (or  micro)  has  code  0265,  while  in
       iso-8859-7 the letter mu has code 0354.

COMPLETE KEYCODE DEFINITIONS
       Each complete key definition line is of the form:

              keycode keynumber = keysym keysym keysym...

       keynumber  is  the  internal  identification number of the key, roughly
       equivalent to the scan code of it.  keynumber can be given in  decimal,
       octal  or hexadecimal notation.  Octal is denoted by a leading zero and
       hexadecimal by the prefix 0x.

       Each of the keysyms represent keyboard actions, of which up to 256  can
       be  bound  to  a  single  key. The actions available include outputting
       character codes or character sequences, switching consoles or  keymaps,
       booting  the machine etc. (The complete list can be obtained from dump-
       keys(1) by saying  dumpkeys -l .)

       Each keysym may be prefixed by a '+' (plus sign),  in  wich  case  this
       keysym  is  treated  as  a "letter" and therefore affected by the "Cap-
       sLock" the same way as by "Shift" (to be correct, the CapsLock  inverts
       the  Shift  state).   The  ASCII letters ('a'-'z' and 'A'-'Z') are made
       CapsLock'able by default.  If Shift+CapsLock should not produce a lower
       case symbol, put lines like

              keycode 30 = +a  A

       in the map file.

       Which  of  the actions bound to a given key is taken when it is pressed
       depends on what modifiers are in effect at that moment.   The  keyboard
       driver  supports  9  modifiers. These modifiers are labeled (completely
       arbitrarily) Shift, AltGr, Control, Alt, ShiftL, ShiftR,  CtrlL,  CtrlR
       and  CapsShift.   Each  of  these modifiers has an associated weight of
       power of two according to the following table:

              modifier            weight

              Shift                  1
              AltGr                  2
              Control                4
              Alt                    8
              ShiftL                16
              ShiftR                32
              CtrlL                 64
              CtrlR                128
              CapsShift            256

       The effective action of a key is found out by adding up the weights  of
       all the modifiers in effect. By default, no modifiers are in effect, so
       action number zero, i.e. the one in the first column in a  key  defini-
       tion  line,  is  taken  when  the key is pressed or released. When e.g.
       Shift and Alt modifiers are in effect, action  number  nine  (from  the
       10th column) is the effective one.

       Changing  the  state of what modifiers are in effect can be achieved by
       binding appropriate key actions to desired keys. For  example,  binding
       the  symbol  Shift to a key sets the Shift modifier in effect when that
       key is pressed and cancels the effect of that modifier when the key  is
       released. Binding AltGr_Lock to a key sets AltGr in effect when the key
       is pressed and cancels the effect when the key is pressed  again.   (By
       default Shift, AltGr, Control and Alt are bound to the keys that bear a
       similar label; AltGr may denote the right Alt key.)

       Note that you should be very careful when binding  the  modifier  keys,
       otherwise  you can end up with an unusable keyboard mapping. If you for
       example define a key to have Control in its first column and leave  the
       rest  of  the columns to be VoidSymbols, you're in trouble. This is be-
       cause pressing the key puts Control modifier in effect and the  follow-
       ing  actions are looked up from the fifth column (see the table above).
       So, when you release the key, the  action  from  the  fifth  column  is
       taken. It has VoidSymbol in it, so nothing happens. This means that the
       Control modifier is still in effect, although  you  have  released  the
       key.   Re-pressing  and releasing the key has no effect. To avoid this,
       you should always define all the columns to have the same modifier sym-
       bol. There is a handy short-hand notation for this, see below.

       keysyms  can  be  given in decimal, octal, hexadecimal, unicode or sym-
       bolic notation.  The numeric notations use  the  same  format  as  with
       keynumber.   Unicode notation is "U+" followed by four hexadecimal dig-
       its.  The symbolic notation resembles that used by xmodmap(1).  Notable
       differences  are  the number symbols. The numeric symbols '0', ..., '9'
       of xmodmap(1) are replaced with the corresponding words 'zero',  'one',
       ... 'nine' to avoid confusion with the numeric notation.

       It  should  be  noted  that  using  numeric notation for the keysyms is
       highly unportable as the key action numbers may vary  from  one  kernel
       version  to  another  and the use of numeric notations is thus strongly
       discouraged. They are intended to be used only when you know there is a
       supported keyboard action in your kernel for which your current version
       of loadkeys(1) has no symbolic name.

       There is a number of short-hand notations to add readability and reduce
       typing work and the probability of typing-errors.

       First of all, you can give a map specification line, of the form

              keymaps 0-2,4-5,8,12

       to  indicate that the lines of the keymap will not specify all 256 col-
       umns, but only the indicated ones. (In the  example:  only  the  plain,
       Shift,  AltGr,  Control,  Control+Shift, Alt and Control+Alt maps, that
       is, 7 columns instead of 256.)  When no such line is given, the keymaps
       0-M  will  be defined, where M+1 is the maximum number of entries found
       in any definition line.

       Next, you can leave off any trailing VoidSymbol entries from a key def-
       inition  line.  VoidSymbol  denotes a keyboard action which produces no
       output and has no other effects either. For example, to define key num-
       ber  30  to  output  'a'  unshifted, 'A' when pressed with Shift and do
       nothing when pressed with AltGr or other modifiers, you can write

              keycode  30 = a     A

       instead of the more verbose

              keycode  30 = a     A    VoidSymbol     VoidSymbol \
                        VoidSymbol VoidSymbol VoidSymbol ...

       For added convenience, you can usually get off with  still  more  terse
       definitions.  If  you enter a key definition line with only and exactly
       one action code after the equals sign, it has a special meaning. If the
       code (numeric or symbolic) is not an ASCII letter, it means the code is
       implicitly replicated through all columns being defined.   If,  on  the
       other  hand,  the  action  code is an ASCII character in the range 'a',
       ..., 'z' or 'A', ..., 'Z' in the ASCII collating sequence, the  follow-
       ing  definitions are made for the different modifier combinations, pro-
       vided these are actually being defined.  (The table lists the two  pos-
       sible  cases: either the single action code is a lower case letter, de-
       noted by 'x' or an upper case letter, denoted by 'Y'.)

           modifier                symbol

           none                    x              Y
           Shift                   X              y
           AltGr                   x              Y
           Shift+AltGr             X              y
           Control                 Control_x      Control_y
           Shift+Control           Control_x      Control_y
           AltGr+Control           Control_x      Control_y
           Shift+AltGr+Control     Control_x      Control_y
           Alt                     Meta_x         Meta_Y
           Shift+Alt               Meta_X         Meta_y
           AltGr+Alt               Meta_x         Meta_Y
           Shift+AltGr+Alt         Meta_X         Meta_y
           Control+Alt             Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
           Shift+Control+Alt       Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
           AltGr+Control+Alt       Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
           Shift+AltGr+Control+Alt Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y

SINGLE MODIFIER DEFINITIONS
       All the previous forms of key definition lines always  define  all  the
       M+1  possible modifier combinations being defined, whether the line ac-
       tually contains that many action codes or not.  There  is,  however,  a
       variation  of the definition syntax for defining only single actions to
       a particular modifier combination of a key. This is especially  useful,
       if  you load a keymap which doesn't match your needs in only some modi-
       fier combinations, like AltGr+function keys. You can then make a  small
       local  file  redefining only those modifier combinations and loading it
       after the main file.  The syntax of this form is:

       { plain | <modifier sequence> } keycode keynumber = keysym

       , e.g.,
              plain keycode 14 = BackSpace
              control alt keycode 83 = Boot
              alt keycode 105 = Decr_Console
              alt keycode 106 = Incr_Console
       Using "plain" will define only the base entry of a key  (i.e.  the  one
       with  no  modifiers  in effect) without affecting the bindings of other
       modifier combinations of that key.

STRING DEFINITIONS
       In addition to comments and key definition lines, a keymap can  contain
       string definitions. These are used to define what each function key ac-
       tion code sends. The syntax of string definitions is:

              string keysym = "text"

       text can contain literal characters, octal character codes in the  for-
       mat  of  backslash  followed by up to three octal digits, and the three
       escape sequences \n, \\, and \", for newline, backslash and quote,  re-
       spectively.

COMPOSE DEFINITIONS
       Then there may also be compose definitions. They have syntax

              compose 'char' 'char' to 'char'
       and  describe  how  two  bytes are combined to form a third one (when a
       dead accent or compose key is used).  This is used to get accented let-
       ters and the like on a standard keyboard.

ABBREVIATIONS
       Various abbreviations can be used with kbd-0.96 and later.

       strings as usual
              Defines  the  usual values of the strings (but not the keys they
              are bound to).

       compose as usual for "iso-8859-1"
              Defines the usual compose combinations.

       To find out what keysyms there are available for use  in  keymaps,  use
       the command

              dumpkeys --long-info

       Unfortunately,  there  is  currently no description of what each symbol
       does. It has to be guessed from the name or figured out from the kernel
       sources.

EXAMPLES
       (Be  careful  to use a keymaps line, like the first line of `dumpkeys`,
       or "keymaps 0-15" or so.)

       The following entry exchanges the left Control key and  the  Caps  Lock
       key on the keyboard:

              keycode  58 = Control
              keycode  29 = Caps_Lock

       Key  number 58 is normally the Caps Lock key, and key number 29 is nor-
       mally the Control key.

       The following entry sets the Shift and Caps Lock keys  to  behave  more
       nicely, like in older typewriters. That is, pressing Caps Lock key once
       or more sets the keyboard in CapsLock state and pressing either of  the
       Shift keys releases it.

              keycode  42 = Uncaps_Shift
              keycode  54 = Uncaps_Shift
              keycode  58 = Caps_On

       The  following  entry  sets  the layout of the edit pad in the enhanced
       keyboard to be more like that in the VT200 series terminals:

              keycode 102 = Insert
              keycode 104 = Remove
              keycode 107 = Prior
              shift keycode 107 = Scroll_Backward
              keycode 110 = Find
              keycode 111 = Select
              control alt   keycode 111 = Boot
              control altgr keycode 111 = Boot

       Here's an example to bind the string "du\ndf\n" to the key AltGr-D.  We
       use the "spare" action code F100 not normally bound to any key.

              altgr keycode 32 = F100
              string F100 = "du\ndf\n"

SEE ALSO
       loadkeys(1), dumpkeys(1), showkey(1), xmodmap(1)

                                 24 April 1998                      KEYMAPS(5)

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