1KEYMAPS(5) File Formats Manual KEYMAPS(5)
2
6 keymaps - keyboard table descriptions for loadkeys and dumpkeys
7
9 These files are used by loadkeys(1) to modify the translation tables
10 used by the kernel keyboard driver and generated by dumpkeys(1) from
11 those translation tables.
12 The format of these files is vaguely similar to the one accepted by
14 xmodmap(1). The file consists of charset or key or string definition
15 lines interspersed with comments.
16 Comments are introduced with ! or # characters and continue to the end
18 of the line. Anything following one of these characters on that line is
19 ignored. Note that comments need not begin from column one as with
20 xmodmap(1).
21 The syntax of keymap files is line oriented; a complete definition must
23 fit on a single logical line. Logical lines can, however, be split into
24 multiple physical lines by ending each subline with the backslash char‐
25 acter (\).
26
28 A keymap can include other keymaps using the syntax
29 include "pathname"
31
33 A character set definition line is of the form:
34 charset "iso-8859-x"
36 It defines how following keysyms are to be interpreted. For example,
38 in iso-8859-1 the symbol mu (or micro) has code 0265, while in
39 iso-8859-7 the letter mu has code 0354.
40
42 Each complete key definition line is of the form:
43 keycode keynumber = keysym keysym keysym...
45 keynumber is the internal identification number of the key, roughly
47 equivalent to the scan code of it. keynumber can be given in decimal,
48 octal or hexadecimal notation. Octal is denoted by a leading zero and
49 hexadecimal by the prefix 0x.
50 Each of the keysyms represent keyboard actions, of which up to 256 can
52 be bound to a single key. The actions available include outputting
53 character codes or character sequences, switching consoles or keymaps,
54 booting the machine etc. (The complete list can be obtained from dump‐
55 keys(1) by saying dumpkeys -l .)
56 Each keysym may be prefixed by a '+' (plus sign), in wich case this
58 keysym is treated as a "letter" and therefore affected by the "Cap‐
59 sLock" the same way as by "Shift" (to be correct, the CapsLock inverts
60 the Shift state). The ASCII letters ('a'-'z' and 'A'-'Z') are made
61 CapsLock'able by default. If Shift+CapsLock should not produce a lower
62 case symbol, put lines like
63 keycode 30 = +a A
65 in the map file.
67 Which of the actions bound to a given key is taken when it is pressed
69 depends on what modifiers are in effect at that moment. The keyboard
70 driver supports 8 modifiers. These modifiers are labeled (completely
71 arbitrarily) Shift, AltGr, Control, Alt, ShiftL, ShiftR, CtrlL and
72 CtrlR. Each of these modifiers has an associated weight of power of
73 two according to the following table:
74 modifier weight
76 Shift
78 1
79 AltGr
80 2
81 Control
82 4
83 Alt
84 8
85 ShiftL
86 16
87 ShiftR
88 32
89 CtrlL
90 64
91 CtrlR 128
92 The effective action of a key is found out by adding up the weights of
94 all the modifiers in effect. By default, no modifiers are in effect, so
95 action number zero, i.e. the one in the first column in a key defini‐
96 tion line, is taken when the key is pressed or released. When e.g.
97 Shift and Alt modifiers are in effect, action number nine (from the
98 10th column) is the effective one.
99 Changing the state of what modifiers are in effect can be achieved by
101 binding appropriate key actions to desired keys. For example, binding
102 the symbol Shift to a key sets the Shift modifier in effect when that
103 key is pressed and cancels the effect of that modifier when the key is
104 released. Binding AltGr_Lock to a key sets AltGr in effect when the key
105 is pressed and cancels the effect when the key is pressed again. (By
106 default Shift, AltGr, Control and Alt are bound to the keys that bear a
107 similar label; AltGr may denote the right Alt key.)
108 Note that you should be very careful when binding the modifier keys,
110 otherwise you can end up with an unusable keyboard mapping. If you for
111 example define a key to have Control in its first column and leave the
112 rest of the columns to be VoidSymbols, you're in trouble. This is
113 because pressing the key puts Control modifier in effect and the fol‐
114 lowing actions are looked up from the fifth column (see the table
115 above). So, when you release the key, the action from the fifth column
116 is taken. It has VoidSymbol in it, so nothing happens. This means that
117 the Control modifier is still in effect, although you have released the
118 key. Re-pressing and releasing the key has no effect. To avoid this,
119 you should always define all the columns to have the same modifier sym‐
120 bol. There is a handy short-hand notation for this, see below.
121 keysyms can be given in decimal, octal, hexadecimal, unicode or sym‐
123 bolic notation. The numeric notations use the same format as with
124 keynumber. Unicode notation is "U+" followed by four hexadecimal dig‐
125 its. The symbolic notation resembles that used by xmodmap(1). Notable
126 differences are the number symbols. The numeric symbols '0', ..., '9'
127 of xmodmap(1) are replaced with the corresponding words 'zero', 'one',
128 ... 'nine' to avoid confusion with the numeric notation.
129 It should be noted that using numeric notation for the keysyms is
131 highly unportable as the key action numbers may vary from one kernel
132 version to another and the use of numeric notations is thus strongly
133 discouraged. They are intended to be used only when you know there is a
134 supported keyboard action in your kernel for which your current version
135 of loadkeys(1) has no symbolic name.
136 There is a number of short-hand notations to add readability and reduce
138 typing work and the probability of typing-errors.
139 First of all, you can give a map specification line, of the form
141 keymaps 0-2,4-5,8,12
143 to indicate that the lines of the keymap will not specify all 256 col‐
145 umns, but only the indicated ones. (In the example: only the plain,
146 Shift, AltGr, Control, Control+Shift, Alt and Control+Alt maps, that
147 is, 7 columns instead of 256.) When no such line is given, the keymaps
148 0-M will be defined, where M+1 is the maximum number of entries found
149 in any definition line.
150 Next, you can leave off any trailing VoidSymbol entries from a key def‐
152 inition line. VoidSymbol denotes a keyboard action which produces no
153 output and has no other effects either. For example, to define key num‐
154 ber 30 to output 'a' unshifted, 'A' when pressed with Shift and do
155 nothing when pressed with AltGr or other modifiers, you can write
156 keycode 30 = a A
158 instead of the more verbose
160 keycode 30 = a A VoidSymbol VoidSymbol \
162 VoidSymbol VoidSymbol VoidSymbol ...
163 For added convenience, you can usually get off with still more terse
165 definitions. If you enter a key definition line with only and exactly
166 one action code after the equals sign, it has a special meaning. If the
167 code (numeric or symbolic) is not an ASCII letter, it means the code is
168 implicitly replicated through all columns being defined. If, on the
169 other hand, the action code is an ASCII character in the range 'a',
170 ..., 'z' or 'A', ..., 'Z' in the ASCII collating sequence, the follow‐
171 ing definitions are made for the different modifier combinations, pro‐
172 vided these are actually being defined. (The table lists the two pos‐
173 sible cases: either the single action code is a lower case letter,
174 denoted by 'x' or an upper case letter, denoted by 'Y'.)
175 modifier symbol
177 none x Y
179 Shift X y
180 AltGr x Y
181 Shift+AltGr X y
182 Control Control_x Control_y
183 Shift+Control Control_x Control_y
184 AltGr+Control Control_x Control_y
185 Shift+AltGr+Control Control_x Control_y
186 Alt Meta_x Meta_Y
187 Shift+Alt Meta_X Meta_y
188 AltGr+Alt Meta_x Meta_Y
189 Shift+AltGr+Alt Meta_X Meta_y
190 Control+Alt Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
191 Shift+Control+Alt Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
192 AltGr+Control+Alt Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
193 Shift+AltGr+Control+Alt Meta_Control_x Meta_Control_y
194
196 All the previous forms of key definition lines always define all the
197 M+1 possible modifier combinations being defined, whether the line
198 actually contains that many action codes or not. There is, however, a
199 variation of the definition syntax for defining only single actions to
200 a particular modifier combination of a key. This is especially useful,
201 if you load a keymap which doesn't match your needs in only some modi‐
202 fier combinations, like AltGr+function keys. You can then make a small
203 local file redefining only those modifier combinations and loading it
204 after the main file. The syntax of this form is:
205 { plain | <modifier sequence> } keycode keynumber = keysym
207 , e.g.,
209 plain keycode 14 = BackSpace
210 control alt keycode 83 = Boot
211 alt keycode 105 = Decr_Console
212 alt keycode 106 = Incr_Console
213 Using "plain" will define only the base entry of a key (i.e. the one
214 with no modifiers in effect) without affecting the bindings of other
215 modifier combinations of that key.
216
218 In addition to comments and key definition lines, a keymap can contain
219 string definitions. These are used to define what each function key
220 action code sends. The syntax of string definitions is:
221 string keysym = "text"
223 text can contain literal characters, octal character codes in the for‐
225 mat of backslash followed by up to three octal digits, and the three
226 escape sequences \n, \\, and \", for newline, backslash and quote,
227 respectively.
228
230 Then there may also be compose definitions. They have syntax
231 compose 'char' 'char' to 'char'
233 and describe how two bytes are combined to form a third one (when a
234 dead accent or compose key is used). This is used to get accented let‐
235 ters and the like on a standard keyboard.
236
238 Various abbreviations can be used with kbd-0.96 and later.
239 strings as usual
241 Defines the usual values of the strings (but not the keys they
242 are bound to).
243 compose as usual for "iso-8859-1"
245 Defines the usual compose combinations.
246 To find out what keysyms there are available for use in keymaps, use
248 the command
249 dumpkeys --long-info
251 Unfortunately, there is currently no description of what each symbol
253 does. It has to be guessed from the name or figured out from the kernel
254 sources.
255
257 (Be careful to use a keymaps line, like the first line of `dumpkeys`,
258 or "keymaps 0-15" or so.)
259 The following entry exchanges the left Control key and the Caps Lock
261 key on the keyboard:
262 keycode 58 = Control
264 keycode 29 = Caps_Lock
265 Key number 58 is normally the Caps Lock key, and key number 29 is nor‐
267 mally the Control key.
268 The following entry sets the Shift and Caps Lock keys to behave more
270 nicely, like in older typewriters. That is, pressing Caps Lock key once
271 or more sets the keyboard in CapsLock state and pressing either of the
272 Shift keys releases it.
273 keycode 42 = Uncaps_Shift
275 keycode 54 = Uncaps_Shift
276 keycode 58 = Caps_On
277 The following entry sets the layout of the edit pad in the enhanced
279 keyboard to be more like that in the VT200 series terminals:
280 keycode 102 = Insert
282 keycode 104 = Remove
283 keycode 107 = Prior
284 shift keycode 107 = Scroll_Backward
285 keycode 110 = Find
286 keycode 111 = Select
287 control alt keycode 111 = Boot
288 control altgr keycode 111 = Boot
289 Here's an example to bind the string "du\ndf\n" to the key AltGr-D. We
291 use the "spare" action code F100 not normally bound to any key.
292 altgr keycode 32 = F100
294 string F100 = "du\ndf\n"
295
297 loadkeys(1), dumpkeys(1), showkey(1), xmodmap(1)
298 24 April 1998 KEYMAPS(5)