Manpages

NAME

kbdmap — keyboard map file format for kbdcontrol

SYNOPSIS

kbdmap

DESCRIPTION

A kbdmap file describes how the keys on a keyboard should behave. These files can be loaded using kbdcontrol(1), or kbdmap(1) can be used to select one of the default kbdmap files interactively. A kbdmap file can be specified in rc.conf(5), to be loaded at boot time. The current keymap may also be printed using kbdcontrol(1).

Each line in the file can describe a key or an accent. A ’#’ character begins a comment, which extends to the end of the line.

The description of a key begins with the scancode for that key. Then the effect of the key under combinations of shift, control and alt are listed in the following order: no modifier, shift, control, control and shift, alt, alt and shift, alt and control, alt and control and shift. The action of the key under each modifier can be:

’symbol’

The symbol the key should produce, in single quotes.

decnum

The ASCII value to produce as a decimal number (see ascii(7)). For example, 32 for space.

0xhexnum

The ASCII value to produce as a hexadecimal number. For example, 0x20 for space.

ctrlname

One of the standard names for the ASCII control characters: nul, soh, stx, etx, eot, enq, ack, bel, bs, ht, nl, vt, np, cr, so, si, dle, dc1, dc2, dc3, dc4, nak, syn, etb, can, em, sub, esc, fs, gs, rs, ns, us, sp, del.

accentname

By giving one of the accent names, the next key pressed will produce an accented character in accordance with that accent. See the description of accents below. The accent names are: dgra, dacu, dcir, dtil, dmac, dbre, ddot, duml, ddia, dsla, drin, dced, dapo, ddac, dogo, dcar.

fkeyN

Act as the Nth function key, where N is a decimal number.

lshift

Act as left shift key.

rshift

Act as right shift key.

clock

Act as caps lock key.

nlock

Act as num lock key.

slock

Act as scroll lock key.

lalt|alt

Act as left alt key.

btab

Act as backwards tab.

lctrl|ctrl

Act as left control key.

rctrl

Act as right control key.

ralt

Act as right alt (altgr) key.

alock

Act as alt lock key.

ashift

Act as alt shift key.

meta

Act as meta key.

lshifta|shifta

Act as left shift key / alt lock.

rshifta

Act as right shift key / alt lock.

lctrla|ctrla

Act as left ctrl key / alt lock.

rctrla

Act as right ctrl key / alt lock.

lalta|alta

Act as left alt key / alt lock.

ralta

Act as right alt key / alt lock.

nscr

Act as switch to next screen.

pscr

Act as switch to previous screen.

scrN

Switch to screen N, where N is a decimal number.

boot

Reboot the machine.

halt

Halt the machine.

pdwn

Halt the machine and attempt to power it down.

debug

Call the debugger.

susp

Use APM to suspend power.

saver

Activate screen saver by toggling between splash/text screen.

panic

Panic the system. The sysctl(8) variable machdep.enable_panic_key must be set to 1 to enable this feature.

paste

Act as mouse buffer paste.

Finally, to complete the description of a key, a flag which describes the effect of caps lock and num lock on that key is given. The flag can be ’C’ to indicate that caps lock affects the key, ’N’ to indicate that num lock affects the key, ’B’ to indicate that both caps lock and num lock affects the key, or ’O’ to indicate that neither affects the key.

An accent key works by modifying the behavior of the next key pressed. The description of an accent begins with one of the accent names given above. This is followed by the symbol for the accent, given in single quotes or as a decimal or hexadecimal ASCII value. This symbol will be produced if the accent key is pressed and then the space key is pressed.

The description of the accent key continues with a list showing how it modifies various symbols, by giving pairs made up of the normal symbol and the modified symbol enclosed in parentheses. Both symbols in a pair can be given in either single quotes or as decimal or hexadecimal ASCII values.

For example, consider the following extract from a kbdmap:

041 dgra 172 nop nop ’|’ ’|’ nop nop O
dgra ’’’ ( ’a’ 224 ) ( ’A’ 192 ) ( ’e’ 232 ) ( ’E’ 200 )
( ’i’ 236 ) ( ’I’ 204 ) ( ’o’ 242 ) ( ’O’ 210 )
( ’u’ 249 ) ( ’U’ 217 )

This extract configures the backtick key on a UK keyboard to act as a grave accent key. Pressing backtick followed by space produces a backtick, and pressing a backtick followed by a vowel produces the ISO-8859-1 symbol for that vowel with a grave accent.

FILES
/usr/share/syscons/keymaps/*

standard keyboard map files

SEE ALSO

kbdcontrol(1), kbdmap(1), keyboard(4), syscons(4), ascii(7)

HISTORY

This manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 4.2.

BSD September 11, 2000 BSD