Is there an easy way to remap keys on the Model 01? I just received my PVT model, and right now the choices for the thumb keys are driving me to frustration. I’d like to move around where shift, cmd, etc are placed.

[image] ToyKeeper: Oh, um, sorry, no harm meant. I’m new here, but I saw that your forum account has been around a while, and that you have an active account on github with stars on some keyboardio projects… and assumed you were already involved with this sort of thing. Sorry about my annoyance earlier; your assumption wasn’t unreasonable. I am a programmer, after all (though I’m not sure I’d really describe my account on github as “active”). My only contributions to the firmware thus far have been UX ideas, though; the code itself remains quite opaque to me, since the bits that I’ve tried looking at are largely comment-free and I don’t have a great desire to figure out the structure on my own without documentation. I was mostly trying to make the point that not everyone who wants a configurable keyboard and uses one a lot is a programmer, and that comments like, “Just write a little code” tend to be very off-putting to those people, and get heard as “Give up; you’ll never get what you want”. I, myself, am so bloody-minded that I’ll get what I want whether it’s a colossal waste of my time or not, but I’d much rather not do it that way. To the specific point: yes, xmodmap and the like would work fine, but I don’t intend to use this keyboard on just one machine (or even just one operating system), and I want it to work the way I expect regardless of how the host is configured, so the keymap has got to be on the keyboard itself. Furthermore, the existing TopsyTurvy plugin has all of the same “cheap reverse-shift hack” problems that the more general solution I’m proposing has, but considerably less configurability. (Also, how is using xmodmap not just another “cheap reverse-shift hack”?) And by doing it on the keyboard, I am “eliminating those problems at the source” – the keyboard is the source of the input, not the OS.

[image] merlin: how is using xmodmap not just another “cheap reverse-shift hack”? The keyboard sends scancodes, key number 27 down and key number 52 up, not actual glyphs. Then the OS converts those scancodes into logical events. OSes have an archaic concept that 9 and ( are related in the same way that j and J are related, and that archaic assumption interferes with configurations which want ( and [ as the default and shifted events for a given scancode. The source of the complication is the OS’s scancode translation maps, so why not change the broken map instead of working around it? Instead of this… xmodmap -e ‘keycode 18 = 9 parenleft’ … maybe try this: xmodmap -e ‘keycode 18 = parenleft bracketleft’ Changing it in a keyboard’s firmware can work too, assuming the OS’s map remains predictable, but that’s a bit like putting a painting over a hole in the wall instead of fixing the wall. Sometimes it’s the best option available, or sometimes there might be holes in several walls and it’d be tedious to fix them all. But if given a choice, it’s usually simpler and more robust to fix the wall. It’s awesome that this keyboard accommodates extensive workarounds, lying to the OS about key press/release events in order to trick it into generating different glyphs than it normally would. It gets complicated and fragile pretty quickly though, in ways which aren’t generally a problem when the solution is implemented at a software level instead of a hardware level.

…and that works fine, as long as you only ever use one computer, with one OS, and no virtual machines. But if you use the same keyboard with multiple machines, different OS’s, and setup up new ones occasionally, it’s a ridiculous burden to have to configure the input software over and over. What’s really stupid is that the OS still reads scancodes from the keyboard(s), instead of the keyboard simply sending characters to the OS. It only works that way for historical reasons, and has resulted in the godawful mess that we have to deal with today. The real fix isn’t messing around with xmodmap, et al — it’s making a new, simpler standard of communication between the keyboard and the OS that isn’t saddled by the limitations of ancient hardware.

[image] merlin: What’s really stupid is that the OS still reads scancodes from the keyboard(s), instead of the keyboard simply sending characters to the OS. It only works that way for historical reasons, and has resulted in the godawful mess that we have to deal with today. The real fix isn’t messing around with xmodmap, et al — it’s making a new, simpler standard of communication between the keyboard and the OS that isn’t saddled by the limitations of ancient hardware. As I understand it, that’s actually part of what @algernon is volunteering on with the QMK and InputClub folks on the hid-io project. I’m hopeful that it turns out useful, but getting something that will work well across multiple platforms and for apps that listen for key events is going to take a ton of work.

[image] jesse: As I understand it, that’s actually part of what @algernon is volunteering on with the QMK and InputClub folks on the hid-io project. I’m hopeful that it turns out useful, but getting something that will work well across multiple platforms and for apps that listen for key events is going to take a ton of work. Yes. Yes it will. And maybe it’ll happen in my lifetime, but I’m not holding my breath…

[image] merlin: I want to configure my keyboard so that pressing a key without modifiers will send one keycode (let’s call it alpha), and pressing the same key with shift held down will produce another keycode (beta). In general, alpha and beta might be modified by a (virtual) shift. This would allow me to completely decouple the symbols and numbers that share keys on a standard keyboard for historical reasons, but which have no particular logical association, and recombine them in a way that makes much more sense. In particular, I want one key that produces ( when typed unmodified, but { when typed with shift held. I also want a | (unmodified) / 9 (shifted) key. This cannot be done even with a combination of TopsyTurvy (good for reversing the shift of a key, but not remapping just the shifted keycode) and ShapeShifter (change the shifted keycode, but shift is always applied to that keycode). And even if it can be made to work, the resulting sketch will be quite convoluted. If, on the other hand, I implemented it as a layer, I can do that remapping…but then I can’t use a mouse to do a shift-click or shift-drag (or all the keys in that layer must have shift applied, which defeats the purpose). . . . If nobody else wants it, it makes a hell of a lot more sense for me to pay @algernon to do it in a tiny fraction of the time it would take me, and that’s what I might do in the end. @merlin - I’m hoping to do something exactly like what you describe. And like you, I could try and dust of my C knowledge (which I’ve done nothing with for far too many years), learn Arduino programming, and learn about key codes and the like, and maybe get something working in a few months time… or I could ask (and sponsor) a Subject Matter Expert like @algernon to do the work. I’d be happy to join you, and any others that would like to join us, in sponsoring a plugin, say via algernon’s Patreon page, that would allow “legacy-shifted characters” (let’s call them) on a non-shifted key/level, and a different character (legacy-shifted or not) on the shifted layer of that key. Basically, to visualize the ideas you’ve discussed, things like this: ┏━━━┓ ┏━━━┓ ┃ { ┃ ┃ } ┃ ┃ ( ┃ ┃ ) ┃ ┗━━━┛ ┗━━━┛ ┏━━━┓ ┏━━━┓ ┃ 9 ┃ ┃ ? ┃ ┃ | ┃ ┃ " ┃ ┗━━━┛ ┗━━━┛

You make that sound easy but what is tweaking and reflashing? I learned how to reprogram my Ergodox, so I’m sure I can manage this once i figure it out but i need a left space key. I just need to know where to start I guess

[image] Gaye: You make that sound easy but what is tweaking and reflashing? I learned how to reprogram my Ergodox, so I’m sure I can manage this once i figure it out but i need a left space key. I just need to know where to start I guess IMPORTANT: The promise I’ve made to backers is that if the GUI tools aren’t available and you can’t figure out how to remap using the current stuff, I will be your ‘coding concierge’ - You tell me what you want and I’ll make the changes, build the firmware and walk you through getting it onto your keyboard, up to and including screen-sharing if you need it. It ought not to be something complex you need to figure out. And that’s entirely my fault. @jenigma has been doing heroic work writing docs to make this less opaque. The first step is getting the Arduino tools installed. For MacOS: Install Arduino support on a Mac · keyboardio/Kaleidoscope Wiki · GitHub For Windows 10: Install Arduino support on Windows · keyboardio/Kaleidoscope Wiki · GitHub For Linux: Install Arduino support on Linux · keyboardio/Kaleidoscope Wiki · GitHub Change the keymap. The example turns ‘Prog’ into ‘Esc’, but the idea is the same. [image] Edit A Keymap Firmware for Keyboardio keyboards and other keyboards with AVR or ARM MCUs. - keyboardio/Kaleidoscope

Okay, a bit more work than the Erogodox but I see how it works, I don’t see the Model 01 there though in Examples. I love the feel of this keyboard.

Okay, I think I see. I have a bit more to do here.

Remapping keys?

Help and Getting Started

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Remapping keys?

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