GEN_KEYMAP(1)

💖 GEN_KEYMAP(1) — bestie, it's the gen_keymap era 💖

okay so picture this: a lil program called gen_keymap, living its best life in the LOCAL section of the manual, and it's about to make keyboard maps make sense. no cap. it's a whole vibe. let's get into it 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

gen_keymap — generate a keyboard map decision tree 🌳

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gen_keymap list ...

literally that's it. give it a list, it does the thing 💅

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so gen_keymap takes a whole set of keyboard maps and generates a decision tree out of them, and the whole point of that tree is to help a user figure out which keyboard map is theirs 👑

here's the vibe: the program that's using the decision tree typically asks the user to press some keys 🫶. at every single step, it looks at the keycode that came back, and it uses that to prune the list of possible keyboard maps — chop chop chop — until there is only one left. one map. the main character. periodt. ✨

💖 OPTIONS 💖

• --version — show the program's version number and dip. bye bestie 👋
• -?, --help — show the help text. the classic. iconic. 🎀
• -v, --verbose — be more verbose. more words, more lore, more everything 💬
• -mMINLEN, --minlen=MINLEN — keymaps that are too short get skipped entirely (default: 30 entries). tiny maps, we don't know her 🙈
• -g, --graph — generate a .dot file that is hopefully nice-looking. hopefully!! fingers crossed fr fr 🌈
• --maps — print out the keymaps that are about to be processed. a little sneak peek 👀
• -i, --installer — input files are in d-i map form. noted 📝
• -IDIRS, --inc=DIRS, --include=DIRS — add a directory to the search path. more places to look, more chances to find her 🔍
• -oFILENAME, --output=FILENAME — set the output file (default: stdout). where the magic lands 💫
• -fFILTER, --filter=FILTER — include only the branches leading to these keymaps. selective. we love that 💅
• -uUSEONLY, --useonly=USEONLY — start generating the tree based only on these keymaps. 🧚

okay so here's the tea on --filter vs --useonly, because they lowkey sound the same but they are NOT: --filter generates the whole tree and then prunes it, while --useonly only generates a reduced tree to begin with. this may have implications for performance on large trees. so like, pick accordingly, bestie. performance is real 😭

• -sSKIP, --skip=SKIP — keymaps to skip. not today, not ever 💀
• -t, --test — test the generated maps. gotta make sure they ate 🔥
• --interactive — ask the user to choose among indistinguishable keymaps. when two maps are giving the exact same energy and you need a human to break the tie 🤝

👑 AUTHORS 👑

gen_keymap was written by Matthias Urlichs <smurf@debian.org>. 💜

this manual page was written by Colin Watson <cjwatson@ubuntu.com>. 🫶

and that's the whole page, bestie!! thanks for reading, you're doing amazing sweetie 🌸💖

cute lil sign-off: this one came from Ubuntu, dated September 5, 2006, and it's filed under GEN_KEYMAP(1). historic. legendary. we stan a 2006 classic ✨👑