NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

DUMPKEYS(1)                General Commands Manual               DUMPKEYS(1)

NAME         top

       dumpkeys - dump keyboard translation tables

SYNOPSIS         top

       dumpkeys [ -h --help -i --short-info -l -s --long-info -n --numeric
       -f --full-table -1 --separate-lines -Sshape --shape=shape -t
       --funcs-only -k --keys-only -d --compose-only -ccharset
       --charset=charset -v --verbose -V --version ]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       -h --help
              Prints the program's version number and a short usage message
              to the program'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 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 keymaps(5) for more information about the format
                     of key definition lines).  dumpkeys(1) and loadkeys(1)
                     support a symbolic notation, 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 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 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 -s --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 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 describing the currently defined modifier
              combinations is printed. Then for each key a row with a column
              for each modifier combination is printed. For example, 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.
       -Sshape  --shape=shape
       -t --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 definitions.
       -k --keys-only
              When this option is given, dumpkeys prints only the key
              bindings. Normally dumpkeys prints both the key bindings and
              the string definitions.
       -d --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-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.)
       -v --verbose
       -V --version
              Prints version number and exits.

FILES         top

       @DATADIR@/keymaps   recommended directory for keytable files

SEE ALSO         top

       loadkeys(1), keymaps(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this man‐
       ual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/legion/kbd.git⟩ on
       2017-07-05.  If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
       sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
       source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
       ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
                                 1 Sep 1993                      DUMPKEYS(1)

Pages that refer to this page: dumpkeys(1)loadkeys(1)showkey(1)unicode_start(1)ioctl_console(2)keymaps(5)