KEYBOARD(6) KEYBOARD(6)
NAME
keyboard - how to use the keyboard to type and aid the mouse
DESCRIPTION
Keyboards are idiosyncratic. It should be obvious how to
type ordinary ASCII characters, backspace, tab, escape, and
newline. In Plan B, the key labeled Return or Enter gener-
ates a newline (0x0A); if there is a key labeled Line Feed,
it generates a carriage return (0x0D); Plan B eschews CRLFs.
The control key is the Caps Lock key. All control charac-
ters are typed in the usual way; in particular, control-J is
a line feed and control-M a carriage return.
The left Control, Start, and Alt keys behave like the left,
middle, and right mouse buttons (despite being in the key-
board). The Alt Gr key is used as expected, and the Menu key
is used to compose runes not found in the keyboard.
The key labeled Del or Delete generates the delete charac-
ter. (0x7F).
It is generally somewhere near the lower right of the main
key area.
The → and ← keys, which lie on either side of ↓, perform
undo and redo within omero(1). The arrow key ↑ scrolls back-
ward, and ↓ scrolls forward. The Pg Up, Pg Down, Start, and
End keys are not understood by Plan B. In most cases, func-
tion keys can be used within omero to redirect the
mouse/keyboard to predefined screens (depending on how omero
is started). Also, within omero, the Del key sends an
interrupt event (not a system interrupt!) to the application
in charge of the panel where the key was typed.
Characters, like in Plan 9, are runes (see utf(6)). Any 16-
bit rune can be typed using a compose key followed by sev-
eral other keys. The compose key is Menu key on the PC.
After typing the compose key, type a capital `X' and exactly
four hexadecimal characters (digits and `a' to `f') to type
a single rune with the value represented by the typed num-
ber. There are shorthands for many characters, comprising
the compose key followed by a two- or three-character
sequence. There are several rules guiding the design of the
sequences, as illustrated by the following examples. The
full list is too long to repeat here, but is contained in
the file `/lib/keyboard' in a format suitable for grep(1) or
look(1).
A repeated symbol gives a variant of that symbol, e.g.,
?? yields ¿.
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KEYBOARD(6) KEYBOARD(6)
ASCII digraphs for mathematical operators give the cor-
responding operator, e.g., <= yields ≤.
Two letters give the corresponding ligature, e.g., AE
yields Æ.
Mathematical and other symbols are given by abbrevia-
tions for their names, e.g., pg yields ¶.
Chess pieces are given by a w or b followed by a letter
for the piece (k for king, q for queen, r for rook, n
for knight, b for bishop, or p for pawn), e.g., wk for
a white king.
Greek letters are given by an asterisk followed by a
corresponding latin letter, e.g., *d yields δ.
Cyrillic letters are given by an at sign followed by a
corresponding latin letter or letters, e.g., @ya yields
я.
Script letters are given by a dollar sign followed by
the corresponding regular letter, e.g., $F yields ℱ.
A digraph of a symbol followed by a letter gives the
letter with an accent that looks like the symbol, e.g.,
,c yields ç.
Two digits give the fraction with that numerator and
denominator, e.g., 12 yields ½.
The letter s followed by a character gives that charac-
ter as a superscript, e.g., s1 yields ⁱ. These charac-
ters are taken from the Unicode block 0x2070; the 1, 2,
and 3 superscripts in the Latin-1 block are available
by using a capital S instead of s.
Sometimes a pair of characters give a symbol related to
the superimposition of the characters, e.g., cO yields
©.
A mnemonic letter followed by $ gives a currency sym-
bol, e.g., l$ yields £.
Note the difference between ß (ss) and µ (micron) and the
Greek β and μ.
FILES
/lib/keyboard sorted table of characters and keyboard
sequences
SEE ALSO
Page 2 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)
KEYBOARD(6) KEYBOARD(6)
intro(1), ascii(1), tcs(1), acme(1), rio(1), omero(1),
ox(1), sam(1), cons(3), utf(6)
Page 3 Plan 9 (printed 12/21/24)