keyboard (5)
Leading comments
Copyright (C) 2011 Anton Zinoviev <anton@lml.bas.bg> Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved. This file is offered as-is, without any warranty.
NAME
keyboard - keyboard configuration fileDESCRIPTION
The keyboard file describes the properties of the keyboard. It is read by setupcon(1) in order to configure the keyboard on the console. In Debian systems the default keyboard layout is described in /etc/default/keyboard and it is shared between X and the console. The specification of the keyboard layout in the keyboard file is based on theXKB
options XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and XkbOptions.
Unfortunately, there is little documentation how to use them. Description of all possible values for these options can be found in the file
xorg.lst.
You might want to read ``The XKB Configuration Guide'' by Kamil
Toman and Ivan U. Pascal:
- www.xfree86.org/current/XKB-Config.html Other possible readings are:
-
pascal.tsu.ru/en/xkb
www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb
The complete XKB-specification can be found on
The file keyboard consists of variable settings in
POSIX
format:
- VARIABLE=VALUE
Only one assignment is allowed per line. Comments (starting with '#')
are also allowed.
OPTIONS
The following variables can be set.- XKBMODEL
-
Specifies the
XKBkeyboard model name. Default: pc105 for most platforms.
- XKBLAYOUT
-
Specifies the
XKBkeyboard layout name. This is usually the country or language type of the keyboard. Default: us for most platforms
- XKBVARIANT
-
Specifies the
XKBkeyboard variant components. These can be used to further specify the keyboard layout details. Default: not set.
- XKBOPTIONS
-
Specifies the
XKBkeyboard option components. Options usually relate to the behavior of the special keys(<Shift>, <Control>, <Alt>, <CapsLock>, etc.)Default: not set.
- BACKSPACE
-
Determines the behavior of
<BackSpace>and<Delete>keys on the console. Allowed values: bs, del and guess. In most cases you can specify guess here, in which case the current terminal settings and the kernel of your operating system will be used to determine the correct value. Value bs specifies VT100-conformant behavior:<BackSpace>will generate ^H(ASCII BS)and<Delete>will generate ^?(ASCII DEL).Value del specifies VT220-conformant behavior:<BackSpace>will generate ^?(ASCII DEL)and<Delete>will generate a special function sequence.
- KMAP
-
Usually this variable will be unset but if you don't want to use a
XKBlayout on the console, you can specify an alternative keymap here. Specify a file that is suitable as input for loadkeys(1) on Linux or for kbdcontrol(1) on FreeBSD.
FILES
The standard location of the keyboard file is /etc/default/keyboard. Description of all available keyboard models, layouts, variants and options is available in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst. In most cases, in /usr/share/keymaps/ or /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/ you will find several keymaps that can be used with the variable KMAP.NOTES
In Debian systems, changes in /etc/default/keyboard do not become immediately visible to X. You should either reboot the system, or useudevadm trigger --subsystem-match=input --action=change
BUGS
When a triple-layout is used, i.e. a layout with threeXKB
groups, then the group toggling happens in the following way: Group1
-> Group2 -> Group1 -> Group3.
On FreeBSD triple- and quadruple-layouts are not supported (only the
first and the second layout are taken into account).
The option
grp:shifts_toggle
is not supported.
EXAMPLES
The following configuration will give you the standard
US QWERTY
layout
(us).
The key
<Menu>
will act as a compose key
(compose:menu)
and
<CapsLock>
will act as third control key
(ctrl:nocaps).
XKBLAYOUT=us XKBVARIANT= XKBOPTIONS=compose:menu,ctrl:nocapsIn the following configuration the right
<Alt>
key
(grp:toggle)
will toggle between
US QWERTY
layout
(us)
and Greek
(gr)
layout. The option
grp_led:scroll
is ignored on the console but in X in means to use the ScrollLock
keyboard led as indicator for the current layout (US or Greek).
XKBLAYOUT=us,gr XKBVARIANT= XKBOPTIONS=grp:toggle,grp_led:scrollIn the following configuration the
<Control>+<Shift>
key combination will toggle
(grp:ctrl_shift_toggle)
between French keyboard
(fr)
without dead keys
(nodeadkeys)
and British
(gb)
``Dvorak''
(dvorak)
keyboard. The right
<Win>
key will be a compose-key
(compose:rwin)
and the right
<Alt>
key will function as AltGr
(lv3:lalt_switch).
XKBLAYOUT=fr,gb XKBVARIANT=nodeadkeys,dvorak XKBOPTIONS=grp:ctrl_shift_toggle,compose:rwin,lv3:ralt_switch