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
       because pressing the key puts Control modifier in effect and  the  fol-
       lowing  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,
       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 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
       action 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,
       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 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)