XkbKeySymEntry(3)

💅 XkbKeySymEntry — the manual page, but make it make sense

okay so real talk bestie, this is a page from the XKB FUNCTIONS corner of the X world, and it's genuinely not that deep. it's one function, four arguments, and one very important formula. stay with me 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

XkbKeySymEntry — literally just goes "hey, what keysym lives at this shift level and this group for this keycode" and returns it. that's the whole gig. it's pulling a value out of the two-dimensional array of keysyms for the key corresponding to keycode. iconic behavior, no notes ✨

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

KeySym XkbKeySymEntry (XkbDescPtr xkb, KeyCode keycode, int shift, int grp);

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🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

• xkb — the Xkb description you care about. this is your whole vibe check context, everything lives in here 💖
• keycode — the keycode of interest. yes. the key you're curious about. that one 🫶
• shift — the shift level of interest, bestie. which level we're looking at 🔥
• grp — the group of interest. groups are a thing, we respect them 👑

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so here's the tea ☕. every key has a key width and a number of groups, and those two things get used to form a small two-dimensional array of KeySyms for that key. and the cute part? this array can be a different size for different keys. no cap. they're not all the same, and that's fine, that's the design.

the array for a single key is stored as a linear list, in row-major order — so it's a 2D vibe living in a 1D body, iykyk 😭.

the arrays for all of the keys are stored in the syms field of the client map. and the layout is:

• one row for each group associated with a key
• one column for each level

so if you ever need the index for a given group and shift level, you compute it like this:

idx = group_index * key_width + shift_level

slay. that's it. that's the math 🧚

and to actually find where a key's array starts? you use the offset field of the key_sym_map entry for that key — that's what points you at the beginning of the array. think of it as the little map pin 📍

lastly, the function itself: XkbKeySymEntry returns the keysym corresponding to shift level shift and group grp from the two-dimensional array of keysyms for the key corresponding to keycode. literally exactly what the NAME section said. consistency queen 💅

no error codes, no exit statuses, no environment variables on this page — it's a clean little getter and we love that for it 🌈

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⭐ a very cute sign-off ⭐

this page came to you courtesy of X Version 11 and libX11 1.8.14, and yeah, it's XkbKeySymEntry(3) — the one, the only, the main character of this manpage 🎀💖 go forth and index responsibly, bestie 🦋