DUMPKEYS - phpMan

DUMPKEYS(1) DUMPKEYS(1)

NAME
dumpkeys - dump keyboard translation tables

SYNOPSIS
dumpkeys [ -hilfn -ccharset --help --short-info --long-info --numeric --full-table
--funcs-only --keys-only --compose-only --charset=charset ]

DESCRIPTION
dumpkeys writes, to the standard output, the current contents of the keyboard
driver’s translation tables, in the format specified by keymaps(5).

Using the various options, the format of the output can be controlled and also
other information from the kernel and the programs dumpkeys(1) and loadkeys(1) can
be obtained.

OPTIONS
-h --help
Prints the program’s version number and a short usage message to the pro-
gram’s standard error output and exits.

-i --short-info
Prints some characteristics of the kernel’s keyboard driver. The items shown
are:

Keycode range supported by the kernel

This tells what values can be used after the keycode keyword in
keytable files. See keymaps(5) for more information and the syntax of
these files.

Number of actions bindable to a key

This tells how many different actions a single key can output using
various modifier keys. If the value is 16 for example, you can define
up to 16 different actions to a key combined with modifiers. When the
value is 16, the kernel probably knows about four modifier keys,
which you can press in different combinations with the key to access
all the bound actions.

Ranges of action codes supported by the kernel

This item contains a list of action code ranges in hexadecimal nota-
tion. These are the values that can be used in the right hand side
of a key definition, ie. the vv’s in a line

keycode xx = vv vv vv vv

(see keymaps(5) for more information about the format of key defini-
tion lines). dumpkeys(1) and loadkeys(1) support a symbolic nota-
tion, which is preferable to the numeric one, as the action codes may
vary from kernel to kernel while the symbolic names usually remain
the same. However, the list of action code ranges can be used to
determine, if the kernel actually supports all the symbols load-
keys(1) knows, or are there maybe some actions supported by the ker-
nel that have no symbolic name in your loadkeys(1) program. To see
this, you compare the range list with the action symbol list, see
option --long-info below.

Number of function keys supported by kernel

This tells the number of action codes that can be used to output
strings of characters. These action codes are traditionally bound to
the various function and editing keys of the keyboard and are defined
to send standard escape sequences. However, you can redefine these to
send common command lines, email addresses or whatever you like.
Especially if the number of this item is greater than the number of
function and editing keys in your keyboard, you may have some "spare"
action codes that you can bind to AltGr-letter combinations, for
example, to send some useful strings. See loadkeys(1) for more
details.

Function strings

You can see you current function key definitions with the command

dumpkeys --funcs-only

-l --long-info
This option instructs dumpkeys to print a long information listing. The out-
put is the same as with the --short-info appended with the list of action
symbols supported by loadkeys(1) and dumpkeys(1), along with the symbols’
numeric values.

-n --numeric
This option causes dumpkeys to by-pass the conversion of action code values
to symbolic notation and to print the in hexadecimal format instead.

-f --full-table
This makes dumpkeys skip all the short-hand heuristics (see keymaps(5)) and
output the key bindings in the canonical form. First a keymaps line describ-
ing the currently defined modifier combinations is printed. Then for each
key a row with a column for each modifier combination is printed. For exam-
ple, if the current keymap in use uses seven modifiers, every row will have
seven action code columns. This format can be useful for example to programs
that post-process the output of dumpkeys.

--funcs-only
When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the function key string def-
initions. Normally dumpkeys prints both the key bindings and the string def-
initions.

--keys-only
When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the key bindings. Normally
dumpkeys prints both the key bindings and the string definitions.

--compose-only
When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the compose key combina-
tions. This option is available only if your kernel has compose key sup-
port.

-ccharset --charset=charset
This instructs dumpkeys to interpret character code values according to the
specified character set. This affects only the translation of character code
values to symbolic names. Valid values for charset currently are iso-8859-X,
Where X is a digit in 1-9. If no charset is specified, iso-8859-1 is used
as a default. This option produces an output line ‘charset "iso-8859-X"’,
telling loadkeys how to interpret the keymap. (For example, "division" is
0xf7 in iso-8859-1 but 0xba in iso-8859-8.)

FILES
/lib/kbd/keymaps recommended directory for keytable files