The Answer Guy 30: SCO Compatible Console Keymaps?

#### "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

# The Answer Guy

#### By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

### SCO Compatible Console Keymaps?

From Jim Kjorlaug on 25 Jun 1998
I work for a company that sells vertical solutions using SCO unix as a platform. We are currently looking at linux as another possible platform and I have found a possible contention. Does there exist a keytable that causes the linux keyboard to behave like an SCO console. I have already worked out the termcap for SCO ansi to work on linux but some of the keymaps have me stumped. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. I realize that we could modify our application but it would be much easier if it were possible with a keytable.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Jim Kjorlaug
Teleflora Technologies

> I don't know how a SCO console keymap is supposed to behave --- but Linux does have utilities to remap the console keyboard to your heart's content. All of the popular distributions include the '`loadkeys`' and '`dumpkeys`' programs (parts of Andries Brouwer's '`kbd`' package). You can look at the man pages for these for details.
> I've never used these packages much --- just once to set up "sticky shift" keys for a friend who lost most of the use in one arm to a stroke a couple of years ago and again to answer some other question back before I started this column.
> It does seem quite odd that you'd go for console specific binding rather than using the more portable `termcap`/`terminfo` (`curses`/`ncurses`) interfaces which would allow your app to be accessed via terminals, over modem/dial-up connections, across telnet sessions and from within xterms. However, I'm sure you have your reasons.
> Yann Dirson is working on a package called "Linux console tools" which enhances the kbd package.
> There is also a console fonts package (the '`setfont`' command is also included with many Linux distributions; it allows you to choose from among about 100 different VGA/EGA compatible console fonts, some of which are quite silly). Andries Brouwer is apparentlly the co-author of the console fonts package, too.
> Good luck on the port and welcome to the club.

##### Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 30 July 1998

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