wskbd(4)

NAME

wskbd – generic keyboard support in wscons

SYNOPSIS

wskbd* at ...

DESCRIPTION

The wskbd driver handles common tasks for keyboards within the wscons(4) framework. It is attached to the hardware specific keyboard drivers and provides their connection to “wsdisplay” devices and a character device interface.

The common keyboard support consists of:

Mapping from keycodes (defined by the specific keyboard driver) to keysyms (hardware independent, defined in /usr/include/dev/wscons/wsksymdef.h).
Handling of “compose” sequences. Characters commonly not present as separate keys on keyboards can be generated after either a special “compose” key is pressed or a “dead accent” character is used.
Certain translations, like turning an “ALT” modifier into an “ESC” prefix.
Automatic key repetition (“typematic”).
Parameter handling for “keyboard bells”.
Generation of “keyboard events” for use by X servers.

The wskbd driver provides a number of ioctl functions to control key maps and other parameters. These functions are accessible through the associated “wsdisplay” device as well. A complete list is in /usr/include/dev/wscons/wsconsio.h. The wsconsctl(8) utility allows access to key maps and other variables.

The console locator in the configuration line refers to the device's use as input part of the operating system console. A device specification containing a positive value here will only match if the device is in use as system console. (The console device selection in early system startup is not influenced.) This way, the console device can be connected to a known wskbd device instance.

The wskbd driver traps certain key sequences intended to perform special functions. The Ctrl+Alt+Esc sequence will initiate the ddb(4) kernel debugger if the “ddb.console” sysctl(8) variable is set. When attached to a wsdisplay(4) device, Ctrl+Alt+Fx switches virtual terminals and the Shift+PgUp and Shift+PgDn combinations provide scrollback functionality if the underlying hardware driver supports it. When audio devices are supported, keys Mute, VolumeUp and VolumeDown tweak mixer settings.

Keyboard encodings

The following encodings are supported. Device drivers for legacy keyboard interfaces may only support a subset of these. However, generally, all encodings are supported by pckbd(4) and ukbd(4).

wsconsctl	define	language
user	KB_USER	User-defined
us	KB_US	English/US keyboard mapping (default)
uk	KB_UK	English/UK keyboard mapping
be	KB_BE	Belgian
br	KB_BR	Brazilian with
cf	KB_CF	Canadian French
dk	KB_DK	Danish with
nl	KB_NL	Dutch
ee	KB_EE	Estonian with
fr	KB_FR	French
de	KB_DE	German QWERTZ with
hu	KB_HU	Hungarian
is	KB_IS	Icelandic with
it	KB_IT	Italian
jp	KB_JP	Japanese
la	KB_LA	Latin American Spanish
no	KB_NO	Norwegian with
pl	KB_PL	Polish
pt	KB_PT	Portuguese
ru	KB_RU	Russian
es	KB_ES	Spanish
sv	KB_SV	Swedish with
sf	KB_SF	Swiss French
sg	KB_SG	Swiss German
tr	KB_TR	Turkish (QWERTY) with
ua	KB_UA	Ukrainian
us.declk	KB_US\|KB_DECLK	English/US mapping for
us.dvorak	KB_US\|KB_DVORAK	English/US keyboard with
us.colemak	KB_US\|KB_COLEMAK	English/US keyboard with

The “.nodead” suffix (KB_NODEAD flag) can be applied to layouts with “dead accents” to switch them off.

The KB_US, KB_UK, KB_FR, KB_JP and KB_US|KB_DVORAK mappings can be modified to swap the left ⟨Ctrl⟩ and the ⟨CapsLock⟩ keys by the KB_SWAPCTRLCAPS variant bit or the “.swapctrlcaps” suffix.

The “.metaesc” suffix (KB_METAESC flag) option can be applied to any layout. If set, keys pressed together with the ALT modifier are prefixed by an ESC character. (Standard behaviour is to add 128 to the ASCII value.)

Ioctls

The following ioctl(2) calls are provided by the wskbd driver or by devices which use it. Their definitions are found in ⟨dev/wscons/wsconsio.h⟩.

WSKBDIO_GTYPE: Get the keyboard type.
WSKBDIO_GETMODE: Get the keyboard mode, 0 means translated through keyboard map, 1 means raw.
WSKBDIO_SETMODE: Set the keyboard mode.
WSKBDIO_COMPLEXBELL, WSKBDIO_SETBELL, WSKBDIO_GETBELL, WSKBDIO_SETDEFAULTBELL, WSKBDIO_GETDEFAULTBELL (struct wskbd_bell_data): Get and set keyboard bell settings.
WSKBDIO_SETKEYREPEAT, WSKBDIO_GETKEYREPEAT, WSKBDIO_SETDEFAULTKEYREPEAT, WSKBDIO_GETDEFAULTKEYREPEAT (struct wskbd_keyrepeat_data): Get and set keyboard autorepeat settings.
WSKBDIO_SETLEDS, WSKBDIO_GETLEDS (int): Get and set keyboard LED settings.
WSKBDIO_GETMAP, WSKBDIO_SETMAP (struct wskbd_map_data): Get and set keyboard keymapping settings.
WSKBDIO_GETBACKLIGHT, WSKBDIO_SETBACKLIGHT (struct wskbd_backlight): Get and set keyboard backlight
WSKBDIO_GETENCODING, WSKBDIO_SETENCODING (kbd_t): Get and set keyboard encoding settings.

FILES

/dev/wskbd*
/usr/include/dev/wscons/wsksymdef.h
/usr/include/dev/wscons/wsconsio.h