Keycode range supported by the kernel
This tells what values can be used after the
keycode
keyword in keytable files. See
keytables (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
keytables (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