MAN page from RedHat Other kbd-0.91-10.i386.rpm

DUMPKEYS

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 1 Sep 1993
Index

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

dumpkeyswrites, to the standard output, the current contents of the keyboarddriver's translation tables, in the format specified bykeytables(5).

Using the various options, the format of the output can be controlledand also other information from the kernel and the programsdumpkeys(1)andloadkeys(1)can be obtained.

OPTIONS

-h --help: Prints the program's version number and a short usage message to theprogram's standard error output and exits.
-i --short-info: Prints some characteristics of the kernel's keyboard driver. The itemsshown are:

Keycode range supported by the kernel

: This tells what values can be used after thekeycodekeyword in keytable files. Seekeytables(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 usingvarious modifier keys. If the value is 16 for example, you can define upto 16 different actions to a key combined with modifiers. When the valueis 16, the kernel probably knows about four modifier keys, which you canpress in different combinations with the key to access all the boundactions.

Ranges of action codes supported by the kernel

This item contains a list of action code ranges in hexadecimal notation.These are the values that can be used in the right hand side of a keydefinition, ie. thevv'sin a line

: keycodexx=vv vv vv vv

(seekeytables(5)for more information about the format of key definition lines).dumpkeys(1)andloadkeys(1)support a symbolic notation, which is preferable to the numeric one, asthe action codes may vary from kernel to kernel while the symbolic namesusually remain the same. However, the list of action code ranges can beused to determine, if the kernel actually supports all the symbolsloadkeys(1)knows, or are there maybe some actions supported by the kernel thathave no symbolic name in yourloadkeys(1)program. To see this, you compare the range list with the action symbollist, see option--long-infobelow.

Number of function keys supported by kernel

: This tells the number of action codes that can be used to outputstrings of characters. These action codes are traditionally bound tothe various function and editing keys of the keyboard and are definedto send standard escape sequences. However, you can redefine these tosend common command lines, email addresses or whatever you like.Especially if the number of this item is greater than the number offunction 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. Seeloadkeys(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 instructsdumpkeysto print a long information listing. The output is the same as with the--short-infoappended with the list of action symbols supported byloadkeys(1)anddumpkeys(1),along with the symbols' numeric values.

-n --numeric: This option causesdumpkeysto by-pass the conversion of action code values to symbolic notation andto print the in hexadecimal format instead.

-f --full-table: This makesdumpkeysto skip all the short-hand heuristics (seekeytables(5))and to output the key bindings in the canonical form. For each keya row with a column for each modifier combination is printed. Forexample, if the kernel supports four modifiers, there are 16 modifiercombinations, so every row would have 16 action code columns. Thisformat can be useful for example to programs that post-process theoutput of dumpkeys.

--funcs-only: When this option is given,dumpkeysprints only the function key string definitions. Normallydumpkeysprints both the key bindings and the string definitions.

--keys-only: When this option is given,dumpkeysprints only the key bindings. Normallydumpkeysprints both the key bindings and the string definitions.

--compose-only: When this option is given,dumpkeysprints only the compose key combinations.This option is available only if your kernel has compose key support.

-ccharset --charset=charset: This instructsdumpkeysto interpret character code values according to the specified characterset. This affects only the translation of character code values tosymbolic names. Valid values forcharsetcurrently areiso-8859-1,iso-8859-2,iso-8859-3,iso-8859-4andiso-8859-8.If nocharsetis specified,iso-8859-1is used as a default.This option produces an output line `charset "iso-8859-x"', tellingloadkeys how to interpret the keymap. (For example, "division" is0xf7 in iso-8859-1 but 0xba in iso-8859-8.)

FILES

/usr/lib/kbd/keytables/: recommended directory for keytable files

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