3 ms·

To note, it feels a lot easier nowadays to remap keys, which helps make the best of any layout we've grown used to. Carabiner on macos was great until kext got

To note, it feels a lot easier nowadays to remap keys, which helps make the best of any layout we've grown used to. Carabiner on macos was great until kext got the stinky eye, but I'd assume the situation could improve again. PowerTools on Windows is excelent for most cases, and AHK covers the rest. Unixes have always been stellar on that front. At this point anyone should try at least once to remap some keys to make one's life easier. On this front of the weakness of the US ANSI layout is the lower number of keys, where other layouts (the JIS one for instance, or the british internaltional on mac) give more latitude for extra modifier keys and additional shortcuts.

sandreas 2y ago
I would love to see more Keyboards providing firmware based remapping options... No need for extra drivers or hacky solutions... Just works everywhere. Best case scenario: Use a shortcut to activate mapping profiles to store different mappings in the same keyboard - press Ctrl+alt+super+1: enable profile 1
- lawn 2y ago
  Quite a few keyboards supports the QMK firmware. If that's what you want there are several options at this point.
  - sandreas 2y ago
    I would like to See: - More open keyboard firmware - more vendors supporting it - An Option for (programmable) key mapping within - Support for at least 5 mapping profiles But this is pretty unlikely to happen...
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Yes, that's definitely something that needs to be more common and standardized (looking at you, Logitech) On the "works everywhere", it's a weird beast. Programmable keyboards will work on any machine without any configuration, while software remapping will work on any keyboard, even the cheapest IR dongle keyboard you'll buy in a pinch during a trip. IMO it comes down to which one you switch more often, the machine or the keyboard.
- eviks 2y ago
  Firmware has no knowledge of the use app you're running and other user space info, right? Then it'll always be inferior
  - sandreas 2y ago
    Absolutely. That's what I would use profiles for... Profile 1 for vim, Profile 2 for a specific game, etc. etc... However, mapping e.g. caps lock to ESC (many devs do this) would be a global mapping that just works everywhere on every OS. Firmware mapping would not exclude software mapping at all but just be there IN ADDITION.
    - eviks 2y ago
      A proper sofware-based solution can switch profiles for you automatically depending on the app as it's rather tedious to do so manually. But I definitely agree with the principle - all keyboards should have advanced QMK-like firmware solutions
eviks 2y ago
Karabiner Elements is still great on Macs (and also Keyboard Maestro), PowerToys isn't powerful, but how is Linux stellar, what's as powerful as Autohotkey?
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  Karabiner Elements was a pain for me on key deduplication, and tweaking millisecond delays is just barbaric. It was perfect as a kernel extension, but moving to the safer implementation made it unreliable, which is the last thing I want from a keyboard. PowerToys can currently deal with most key combinations and remapping, which is nice as it's first party and pretty rock solid. I still needed other utilities, but only for smaller tweaks and could live without them. For linux, remapping the keyboard is straight editing the keymap file, and it's less crazy than the registry on windows (last time I looked into there's also no keyboard layout editors supported on windows 11, and I have no hope they'd work with the onscreen keyboard as well)
  - eviks 2y ago
    > For linux, remapping the keyboard is straight editing the keymap file, and it's less crazy than the registry on windows Both mac and windows have this least powerful equivalent, and via mostly more ergonomic gui apps with key detection (you can also edit the file, though its format might be worse). But then this method isn't context aware / dynamic, so nothing stellar about it > tweaking millisecond delays is just barbaric How would you achieve the same with editing a keymap file which has no delays? Curious, which keybind your were able to use in Karabiner, but not in Elements. I know it's less powerful in a few areas (like detecting active field types), but otherwise don't remember reliability fails during transition
    - makeitdouble 2y ago
      > mac and windows have this least powerful equivalent For mac if you're referring to ukulele, it has a bunch of limitation and hard to handle cases. This is kinda normal as it can't handle all the known cases in the universe, but it's also a software targeted at niche users by definition. I couldn't remember what exact case was blocking for me, but I'm definitely not the only one who struggled: https://groups.google.com/g/ukelele-users/c/yeL0OUpR6Gs/m/Wd124QQsBAAJ https://groups.google.com/g/ukelele-users/c/yeL0OUpR6Gs/m/Wd... I don't know of any windows tool of remapping a layout for win11, I'd love to hear about it please. > How would you achieve the same with editing a keymap file which has no delays? Sorry for the misleading. I don't want delays, I'm just remapping a key to have a specific action when pressed alone, and other actions when pressed in a combo. Except Karabiner Elements uses/needs delays to split these two cases (at least for the Cmd key for me) You don't have these limitations with remapping the keyboard at a lower level + remapping the shortcuts. It also was enough of a pain that I moved to keyboards with more keys in the first place.

sandreas 2y ago

I would love to see more Keyboards providing firmware based remapping options... No need for extra drivers or hacky solutions... Just works everywhere. Best case scenario: Use a shortcut to activate mapping profiles to store different mappings in the same keyboard - press Ctrl+alt+super+1: enable profile 1

lawn 2y ago
Quite a few keyboards supports the QMK firmware. If that's what you want there are several options at this point.
- sandreas 2y ago
  I would like to See: - More open keyboard firmware - more vendors supporting it - An Option for (programmable) key mapping within - Support for at least 5 mapping profiles But this is pretty unlikely to happen...
makeitdouble 2y ago
Yes, that's definitely something that needs to be more common and standardized (looking at you, Logitech) On the "works everywhere", it's a weird beast. Programmable keyboards will work on any machine without any configuration, while software remapping will work on any keyboard, even the cheapest IR dongle keyboard you'll buy in a pinch during a trip. IMO it comes down to which one you switch more often, the machine or the keyboard.
eviks 2y ago
Firmware has no knowledge of the use app you're running and other user space info, right? Then it'll always be inferior
- sandreas 2y ago
  Absolutely. That's what I would use profiles for... Profile 1 for vim, Profile 2 for a specific game, etc. etc... However, mapping e.g. caps lock to ESC (many devs do this) would be a global mapping that just works everywhere on every OS. Firmware mapping would not exclude software mapping at all but just be there IN ADDITION.
  - eviks 2y ago
    A proper sofware-based solution can switch profiles for you automatically depending on the app as it's rather tedious to do so manually. But I definitely agree with the principle - all keyboards should have advanced QMK-like firmware solutions

eviks 2y ago

Karabiner Elements is still great on Macs (and also Keyboard Maestro), PowerToys isn't powerful, but how is Linux stellar, what's as powerful as Autohotkey?

makeitdouble 2y ago
Karabiner Elements was a pain for me on key deduplication, and tweaking millisecond delays is just barbaric. It was perfect as a kernel extension, but moving to the safer implementation made it unreliable, which is the last thing I want from a keyboard. PowerToys can currently deal with most key combinations and remapping, which is nice as it's first party and pretty rock solid. I still needed other utilities, but only for smaller tweaks and could live without them. For linux, remapping the keyboard is straight editing the keymap file, and it's less crazy than the registry on windows (last time I looked into there's also no keyboard layout editors supported on windows 11, and I have no hope they'd work with the onscreen keyboard as well)
- eviks 2y ago
  > For linux, remapping the keyboard is straight editing the keymap file, and it's less crazy than the registry on windows Both mac and windows have this least powerful equivalent, and via mostly more ergonomic gui apps with key detection (you can also edit the file, though its format might be worse). But then this method isn't context aware / dynamic, so nothing stellar about it > tweaking millisecond delays is just barbaric How would you achieve the same with editing a keymap file which has no delays? Curious, which keybind your were able to use in Karabiner, but not in Elements. I know it's less powerful in a few areas (like detecting active field types), but otherwise don't remember reliability fails during transition
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    > mac and windows have this least powerful equivalent For mac if you're referring to ukulele, it has a bunch of limitation and hard to handle cases. This is kinda normal as it can't handle all the known cases in the universe, but it's also a software targeted at niche users by definition. I couldn't remember what exact case was blocking for me, but I'm definitely not the only one who struggled: https://groups.google.com/g/ukelele-users/c/yeL0OUpR6Gs/m/Wd124QQsBAAJ https://groups.google.com/g/ukelele-users/c/yeL0OUpR6Gs/m/Wd... I don't know of any windows tool of remapping a layout for win11, I'd love to hear about it please. > How would you achieve the same with editing a keymap file which has no delays? Sorry for the misleading. I don't want delays, I'm just remapping a key to have a specific action when pressed alone, and other actions when pressed in a combo. Except Karabiner Elements uses/needs delays to split these two cases (at least for the Cmd key for me) You don't have these limitations with remapping the keyboard at a lower level + remapping the shortcuts. It also was enough of a pain that I moved to keyboards with more keys in the first place.