Help with inconsistency between Chrysalis and OS levels (M100)

Help and Getting Started
1

Dear all.

I’ve just received my M100 and this surely is love at 1st sight. :slight_smile:

However, I have a tiny issue and maybe someone can point me to the right direction…

My computer has a a normal US international keyboard, runs Debian Linux and I type in Spanish Dvorak. This means that my notebook keycaps show a different sign that the one they write. This is all well since I touch type, so no problem here. Also, most of the M100 usual keys (letters, numbers, function 1~12) works in the same expected place so it seems that retraining muscle memory with those letters may be relatively straightforward.

Since there are no Spanish Dvorak M100 keycaps, and since I will anyway customize the keys, I ordered also Linear A keycaps (beautiful).

However (dramatic music playing)… Chrysalis shows a normal QWERTY M100 keyboard. That is, there is no coincidence between what Chrysalis shows and what the keyboard types/sends. For example, the left home row shows in Chrysalis “asdf”, but sends “aoeu”. In this way it is pretty hard to learn and modify the keys as I’d like, and even harder with the non-standard keys (I still haven’t found the ‘Insert’ key). :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I believe that the discussion “How to use custom layout on keyboard io and laptop keyboard (hardware vs software layout)” is telling a lot of the whys of this story, but I still don’t get how I can change the described slightly sad state.

In brief: I’d prefer to leave the OS keyboard configuration as it is so I can use it without the M100, and work at the M100/Chrysalis level so it is coherent what it shows and what it types.

Any idea how to do so? I’m completely lost here. This is my 1st serious keyboard and I want to learn, so research and work are not problems at all. Any reference or pointer will be very gratefully received.

As always, thanks a lot for your time and attention.

Best regards from (an already hot) Buenos Aires… :smile:

2

After some talk in the discord server about using a standard layout as base (that would imply not being able to touch type in the computer keyboard), I found what it seems a promising solution that seems to work well -at least- in Linux.

The key points is that each keyboard can have a different layout (see Two keyboards two language layouts - Ask Ubuntu). So we can let the computer keyboard be as each like it, and define the M100 layout as needed to configure in Chrysalis.

In my case, the laptop built-in keyboard is set as Spanish Dvorak (setxkbmap dvorak es), but the M100 is set as (standard) Spanish (setxkbmap -device 24 es). This allows an easy configuration in Chrysalis.

While I’m still working on this, up to now it seems it works OK. :+1:t4:

And since this implies setting the layout with setxkbmap per device, absolutely any layout is possible, not only Standard Unicode ones. :smiley:

I will report later, but it seems a solution for any layout that doesn’t requires to change the computer built-in keyboard, so both keyboards works as desired at the same time.

See you all, and thanks for the discussion in the server. :slight_smile:

Best…