Manual Page Search Parameters
KBDMAP(5) MidnightBSD File Formats Manual KBDMAP(5)

kbdmap — keyboard map file format for kbdcontrol

kbdmap

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 Unicode value to produce as a decimal number (see ascii(7)). For example, 32 for space.
0xhexnum
The Unicode 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, lf, vt, ff, cr, so, si, dle, dc1, dc2, dc3, dc4, nak, syn, etb, can, em, sub, esc, fs, gs, rs, us, sp, del.
control-alias
One of the historical aliases for certain ASCII control characters: nl, np, ns.
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 in the range from 1 to 96. Refer to the atkbd(4) manual page for a list of predefined function keys. You can use the -f option of the kbdcontrol(1) utility to assign arbitrary strings to function keys.
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 Unicode 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 Unicode 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.

/usr/share/syscons/keymaps/*
standard keyboard map files for syscons
/usr/share/vt/keymaps/*
standard keyboard map files for vt

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

This manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 4.2.

January 2, 2016 midnightbsd-3.1