ckbcomp(1) [v7 man page]
CKBCOMP(1) Console-setup User's Manual CKBCOMP(1) NAME
ckbcomp - compile a XKB keyboard description to a keymap suitable for loadkeys or kbdcontrol SYNOPSIS
ckbcomp [OPTION...] [XKBLAYOUT [XKBVARIANT [XKBOPTIONS]...]] DESCRIPTION
The ckbcomp keymap compiler converts a description of an XKB keyboard layout into a console keymap that can be read directly by loadkeys(1) or kbdcontrol(1). On its standard output ckbcomp dumps the generated keyboard definition. The most important difference between the arguments of setxkbmap(1) and the arguments of ckbcomp is the additional parameter -charmap when non-Unicode keyboard map is wanted. Without -charmap ckbcomp will generate Unicode keyboard. OPTIONS
General options -?,-help Print a usage message and exit. -charmap charmap The encoding to use for the output keymap. There should be an character mapping table defining this encoding in /usr/share/console- trans. Definitions of the following charmaps are provided: ARMSCII-8, CP1251, CP1255, CP1256, GEORGIAN-ACADEMY, GEORGIAN-PS, IBM1133, ISIRI-3342, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, ISO-8859-3, ISO-8859-4, ISO-8859-5, ISO-8859-6, ISO-8859-7, ISO-8859-8, ISO-8859-9, ISO-8859-10, ISO-8859-11, ISO-8859-13, ISO-8859-14, ISO-8859-15, ISO-8859-16, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, TIS-620 and VISCII. -Idir Look in the top-level directory dir for files included by the keymap description. This option may be used multiple times. If a file can not be found in any of the specified directories, it will be searched also in some other standard locations, such as /etc/console-setup/ckb, /usr/share/X11/xkb and /etc/X11/xkb -v level Set level of detail for listing. The argument level must be a number from 1 to 10. -compact Generate a compact keymap with at most two xkb groups and two levels in each or only one xkb-group and up to four levels. -freebsd Generate a keymap for FreeBSD. -backspace [bs|del] Specifies the behaviour of the <BackSpace> and <Delete> keys. Value bs specifies VT100-conformant behaviour: <BackSpace> will gener- ate ^H (ASCII BS) and <Delete> will generate ^? (ASCII DEL). Value del specifies VT220-conformant behavior: <BackSpace> will gen- erate ^? (ASCII DEL) and <Delete> will generate a special function sequence. XKB Keyboard Description The keyboard layout, variant and options components can be also specified directly on the command line. See the synopsis of the command. -symbols name Specifies the symbols component name of the XKB keyboard description. -keycodes name Specifies the keycodes component name of the XKB keyboard description. -rules name The name of the rules file to use. -model name Specifies the keyboard model used to choose the component names. -layout name Specifies the layout used to choose the component names. -variant name Specifies the layout variant used to choose the component names. -option name Adds an option used to choose component names. FILES
/usr/share/consoletrans /etc/console-setup/ckb /usr/share/X11/xkb /etc/X11/xkb NOTES
If the option -freebsd is used together with -backspace del, then the key <Delete> will generate the special code fkey70. It is your re- sponsibility to assign the appropriate sequence to this special code by using the following command: kbdcontrol -f 70 "`printf ' 33[3~'`" SEE ALSO
keyboard(5), setxkbmap(1) console-setup 2011-03-17 CKBCOMP(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
KEYBOARD(5) Console-setup User's Manual KEYBOARD(5) NAME
keyboard - keyboard configuration file DESCRIPTION
The keyboard file describes the properties of the keyboard. It is read by setupcon(1) in order to configure the keyboard on the console. In Debian systems the default keyboard layout is described in /etc/default/keyboard and it is shared between X and the console. The specification of the keyboard layout in the keyboard file is based on the XKB options XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and XkbOptions. Unfortunately, there is little documentation how to use them. Description of all possible values for these options can be found in the file xorg.lst. You might want to read "The XKB Configuration Guide" by Kamil Toman and Ivan U. Pascal: http://www.xfree86.org/current/XKB-Config.html Other possible readings are: http://pascal.tsu.ru/en/xkb/ http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/ The complete XKB-specification can be found on http://xfree86.org/current/XKBproto.pdf The file keyboard consists of variable settings in POSIX format: VARIABLE=VALUE Only one assignment is allowed per line. Comments (starting with '#') are also allowed. OPTIONS
The following variables can be set. XKBMODEL Specifies the XKB keyboard model name. Default: pc105 for most platforms. XKBLAYOUT Specifies the XKB keyboard layout name. This is usually the country or language type of the keyboard. Default: us for most platforms XKBVARIANT Specifies the XKB keyboard variant components. These can be used to further specify the keyboard layout details. Default: not set. XKBOPTIONS Specifies the XKB keyboard option components. Options usually relate to the behavior of the special keys (<Shift>, <Control>, <Alt>, <CapsLock>, etc.) Default: not set. BACKSPACE Determines the behavior of <BackSpace> and <Delete> keys on the console. Allowed values: bs, del and guess. In most cases you can specify guess here, in which case the current terminal settings and the kernel of your operating system will be used to determine the correct value. Value bs specifies VT100-conformant behavior: <BackSpace> will generate ^H (ASCII BS) and <Delete> will generate ^? (ASCII DEL). Value del specifies VT220-conformant behavior: <BackSpace> will generate ^? (ASCII DEL) and <Delete> will gener- ate a special function sequence. KMAP Usually this variable will be unset but if you don't want to use a XKB layout on the console, you can specify an alternative keymap here. Specify a file that is suitable as input for loadkeys(1) on Linux or for kbdcontrol(1) on FreeBSD. FILES
The standard location of the keyboard file is /etc/default/keyboard. Description of all available keyboard models, layouts, variants and options is available in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst. In most cases, in /usr/share/keymaps/ or /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/ you will find several keymaps that can be used with the variable KMAP. NOTES
In Debian systems, changes in /etc/default/keyboard do not become immediately visible to X. You should either reboot the system, or use udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=input --action=change BUGS
When a triple-layout is used, i.e. a layout with three XKB groups, then the group toggling happens in the following way: Group1 -> Group2 -> Group1 -> Group3. On FreeBSD triple- and quadruple-layouts are not supported (only the first and the second layout are taken into account). The option grp:shifts_toggle is not supported. EXAMPLES
The following configuration will give you the standard US QWERTY layout (us). The key <Menu> will act as a compose key (compose:menu) and <CapsLock> will act as third control key (ctrl:nocaps). XKBLAYOUT=us XKBVARIANT= XKBOPTIONS=compose:menu,ctrl:nocaps In the following configuration the right <Alt> key (grp:toggle) will toggle between US QWERTY layout (us) and Greek (gr) layout. The op- tion grp_led:scroll is ignored on the console but in X in means to use the ScrollLock keyboard led as indicator for the current layout (US or Greek). XKBLAYOUT=us,gr XKBVARIANT= XKBOPTIONS=grp:toggle,grp_led:scroll In the following configuration the <Control>+<Shift> key combination will toggle (grp:ctrl_shift_toggle) between French keyboard (fr) with- out dead keys (nodeadkeys) and British (gb) "Dvorak" (dvorak) keyboard. The right <Win> key will be a compose-key (compose:rwin) and the right <Alt> key will function as AltGr (lv3:lalt_switch). XKBLAYOUT=fr,gb XKBVARIANT=nodeadkeys,dvorak XKBOPTIONS=grp:ctrl_shift_toggle,compose:rwin,lv3:ralt_switch SEE ALSO
setupcon(1), ckbcomp(1), console-setup(5), loadkeys(1), kbdcontrol(1) console-setup 2011-03-17 KEYBOARD(5)