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 character ().

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
       dumpkeys(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 8 modifiers. These modifiers are labeled (completely arbitrarily) Shift, AltGr, Control, Alt,  ShiftL,  ShiftR,	CtrlL  and
       CtrlR.  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

       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 definition 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
       because pressing the key puts Control modifier in effect and the following 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 symbol. There is a handy short-hand notation for this, see
       below.

       keysyms can be given in decimal, octal, hexadecimal, unicode or symbolic notation.  The numeric notations  use  the  same  format  as  with
       keynumber.   Unicode  notation  is  "U+"  followed  by  four  hexadecimal digits.  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 ver-
       sion 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 columns, 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 definition line. VoidSymbol denotes a keyboard action which produces no
       output and has no other effects either. For example, to define key number 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 following definitions are made for the different modifier combinations,
       provided  these are actually being defined.  (The table lists the two possible cases: either the single action code is a lower case letter,
       denoted 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
       actually  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
       modifier combinations, like AltGr+function keys. You can then make a small local file redefining only those modifier combinations and load-
       ing 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
       action code sends. The syntax of string definitions is:

	      string keysym = "text"

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

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  ker-
       nel 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 normally 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
df
" 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
df
"

SEE ALSO

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

								   24 April 1998							KEYMAPS(5)