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 con-
tents of the keyboard driver's translation tables, in the
format specified by keytables(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 program's standard error out-
put and exits.
-i --short-info
Prints some characteristics of the kernel's key-
board 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
keytables(5) for more information and the
syntax of these files.
Number of actions bindable to a key
This tells how many different actions a sin-
gle 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 dif-
ferent 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 notation. 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 keytables(5) for more information about
the format of key definition lines). dump-
keys(1) and loadkeys(1) support a symbolic
notation, which is preferable to the numeric
one, as the action codes may vary from ker-
nel to kernel while the symbolic names usu-
ally remain the same. However, the list of
action code ranges can be used to determine,
if the kernel actually supports all the sym-
bols loadkeys(1) knows, or are there maybe
some actions supported by the kernel 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 stan-
dard escape sequences. However, you can
redefine these to send common command lines,
email addresses or whatever you like. Espe-
cially 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-let-
ter combinations, for example, to send some
useful strings. See loadkeys(1) for more
details.
Function strings
You can see you current function key defini-
tions with the command
dumpkeys --funcs-only
-l --long-info
This option instructs dumpkeys to print a long
information listing. The output 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 conver-
sion of action code values to symbolic notation and
to print the in hexadecimal format instead.
-f --full-table
This makes dumpkeys to skip all the short-hand
heuristics (see keytables(5)) and to output the key
bindings in the canonical form. For each key a row
with a column for each modifier combination is
printed. For example, if the kernel supports four
modifiers, there are 16 modifier combinations, so
every row would have 16 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 definitions. Normally dumpkeys
prints both the key bindings and the string defini-
tions.
--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 combinations. This option is available
only if your kernel has compose key support.
-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-8859-1, iso-8859-2, iso-8859-3,
iso-8859-4 and iso-8859-8. If no charset is speci-
fied, 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
/usr/lib/kbd/keytables/
recommended directory for keytable
files
SEE ALSO
dumpkeys(1) keytables(5)