KBDMAP(5)                 FreeBSD File Formats Manual                KBDMAP(5)

NAME
     kbdmap - keyboard map file format for kbdcontrol

SYNOPSIS
     kbdmap

DESCRIPTION
     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.

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

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

HISTORY
     This manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 4.2.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6         January 2, 2016        FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6