Temporary non-QWERTY non-Latin keyboard layout support

[eugenesvk]

There is an issue #133 opened re. proper support of international keyboard layout support

Meanwhile I've ported my little Python scripts that allow you to add your custom keymap (map every qwerty key to some other key) and then use it to generate a new config file that includes existing config replaced/extended with the keys converted to this custom keymap.

• min script https://github.com/eugenesvk/kbdHelix/blob/modifew/src/modify_config.toml.tmpl
• conversion module where you'd actually add your alternative keymap https://github.com/eugenesvk/kbdHelix/blob/modifew/src/layout_convert.py
• a tomlkit library for parsing TOML configs (not included)

While the script is part of a more complicated chezmoi-based build setup that allows you to do some sane config management for extensive remapping , you could also tweak this line to just read from an existing Helix config file and then redirect this print to create another file with which to replace your config (don't forget to back the original up) to ignore that complexity

P.S. This approach has two downsides

• For non-latin layouts keys that are not translated (e.g., space) that are used as submodes/menus get polluted with both Latin and non-Latin variants regardless of your layout
• You can't have the same symbol act differently depending on your active layout as ultimately the config is ignorant about layouts and only understands non-Latin input due to non-Latin characters the app receives

[VKondakoff]

@eugenesvk,

please, can you give a little bit more detail of how to use it? I installed tomlkit, downloaded both files to kbdHelix folder and tried to run layout_convert.py, expecting to see the output, where Cyrillic keys (йцукен) are mapped to Latin (qwerty). But nothing happens. Should I edit the scripts first somehow?

Edit: Ah, got it. I should run modify_config.toml.tmpl, and not the layout_convert.py. But running modify_config.toml.tmpl gives me a bunch of errors:

Thank you!

PS: shouldn't this line be commented?

[eugenesvk]

It means your config has no [keys.normal], so the parser can't read those modes from it, did you read the full config to the string (the script doesn't do that currently, it's fed data by chezmoi)?

Replace cfg_def_s with something like this to read from your config file and try again

cfg_def_f = r"""path/to/config.toml"""
cfg_def_s = ""
with open(cfg_def_f,'r') as file:
  cfg_def_s = file.read()

fixed the comment (template was ignoring it inside its own comment)

[VKondakoff]

Aha, got it. Thank you, it works now: if there are some qwerty keymaps in config.toml, they are mapped to their йцукен equivalent. But this is not very useful, because default Helix keymaps are not in the config, so they are not mapped. Like these (no one adds default keymaps to the config):

"k" = "move_line_up" 
"h" = "move_char_right"
"j" = "move_line_down" 

I was hoping to find a way to remap every existing Helix Normal mode keymap to its йцукен equivalent... Any idea if this is possible? I really don't want to move every Normal mode keymap from the docs to the config...

[eugenesvk]

no one adds default keymaps to the config)

I did :) since all of these defaults are bad

there is some default config https://github.com/eugenesvk/kbdHelix/blob/main/helper/config_default.toml form an unknow version, and maybe you could find a better version here #1210

Or you could move from the source code https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/blob/master/helix-term/src/keymap/default.rs or maybe even write a simple parsing script to generate toml :)

[VKondakoff]

Hey, that's great! Thank you for help!