PCKBD(4)

NAME
pckbd - PC keyboard driver for wscons

SYNOPSIS
pckbc* at isa?
pckbd* at pckbc?
wskbd* at pckbd? console ?
options PCKBD_LAYOUT=XXX

DESCRIPTION
This driver supports PC/AT keyboards within the wscons(4) console framework. It doesn't provide direct device driver entry points but makes its functions available via the internal wskbd(4) interface.

The pckbd driver supports a number of different key mappings which can be chosen from with the kernel option PCKBD_LAYOUT at compile time or with the utility wsconsctl(8) (variable: “encoding”) at runtime. Other mappings can be used if the whole keymap is replaced by means of wsconsctl(8). The builtin mappings are at this time:
option | wsconsctl | language
KB_US | us | English/US keyboard mapping (default)
KB_DE | de | German with
“dead accents”
KB_FR | fr | French
KB_DK | dk | Danish with
“dead accents”
KB_IT | it | Italian
KB_UK | uk | British
KB_JP | jp | Japanese
KB_SV | sv | Swedish with
“dead accents”
KB_US|KB_DECLK | us.declk | English/US mapping for DEC
 | | LK400-style keyboards with PC keyboard
 | | interface (e.g., LK461)
KB_US|KB_DVORAK | us.dvorak | English/US keyboard with
 | | “Dvorak” layout
KB_US|KB_COLEMAK | us.colemak | English/US keyboard with
 | | “Colemak” layout
KB_NO | no | Norwegian with
“dead accents”
KB_PT | pt | Portuguese
KB_ES | es | Spanish

The KB_DE, KB_DK, KB_NO and KB_SV mappings can be used in the KB_NODEAD ( “.nodead”) variant. This switches off the “dead accents”.

The KB_US, KB_JP and KB_US|KB_DVORAK mappings can be modified to swap the left CTRL and the CAPS LOCK keys by the KB_SWAPCTRLCAPS variant bit or the “.swapctrlcaps” suffix.

The KB_METAESC ( “.metaesc”) 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.)

Because PC keyboard hardware doesn't contain a beeper, requests for “keyboard beeps” cannot be handled directly. On alpha and i386 a helper device attached to the pcppi(4) driver allows the use of the standard ISA speaker for this purpose. On acorn32, vidcaudio(4) performs this function.

EXAMPLES
To set a German keyboard layout without “dead accents” and sending an ESC character before the key symbol if the ALT key is pressed simultaneously, use wsconsctl -w encoding=de.nodead.metaesc. To set it at kernel build time, add options PCKBD_LAYOUT="(KB_DE | KB_NODEAD | KB_METAESC)"
to the kernel configuration file.

SEE ALSO
isa(4), pcppi(4), wskbd(4), wsconsctl(8)

BUGS
The list of builtin mappings doesn't follow any logic. It grew as people submitted what they needed.