Make lsft+spc = bspc and rsft+spc = del

[cybardev]

As the title says, I want Shift+Space = Backspace/Delete depending on which Shift was held.

My current config (swaps Esc and Caps):

(defsrc esc caps)
(deflayer default caps esc)

I tried the following (lsft only to begin with) to no avail:

(defsrc esc caps lsft spc)
(defalias bksp (layer-while-held alter))
(deflayer default caps esc @bksp spc)
(deflayer alter caps esc @bksp bspc)

Completely new to Kanata and quite lost 😓 Any help, suggestions, or guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[jtroo]

Try these:

https://jtroo.github.io/config.html#fork

https://jtroo.github.io/config.html#switch

https://jtroo.github.io/config.html#global-overrides

[jtroo]

You need to describe "to no avail" in more detail. Guessing at what's wrong, also add lsft/rsft in the output mapping where bspc and del are.

[cybardev]

You need to describe "to no avail" in more detail.

Apologies for the lack of detail. "To no avail" = default keyboard layout (kanata does not modify any key).

Guessing at what's wrong, also add lsft/rsft in the output mapping where bspc and del are.

Tried this to no avail (as defined above):

(defsrc)
(deflayer default)
(defoverrides
  (esc) (caps)
  (caps) (esc)
  (lsft spc) (lsft bspc)
  (rsft spc) (rsft del)
)

Even the Caps <-> Esc swapping doesn't work with these configs.

[jtroo]

Ah I see. I misunderstood the initial intent, you should undo my suggestion and remove the sft keys from output.

Then have a read through: https://jtroo.github.io/config.html#defsrc

The sim tests can be misleading because they don't respect defsrc pre-filtering.

[cybardev]

Then have a read through: https://jtroo.github.io/config.html#defsrc

Thanks. Sorry for missing that obvious bit. 😅 Makes sense that if it's not in defsrc, Kanata won't process it unless explicitly opted-in.

The following works for me:

(defcfg process-unmapped-keys yes)
(defsrc)
(deflayer default)
(defoverrides
  (esc) (caps)
  (caps) (esc)
  (lsft spc) (bspc)
  (rsft spc) (del)
)

[cybardev]

This also seems to work, but acts a bit "weird" sometimes:

(defsrc esc caps lsft rsft spc bspc del)
(deflayer default caps esc lsft rsft spc bspc del)
(defoverrides
  (lsft spc) (bspc)
  (rsft spc) (del)
)

The "weird" behaviour: Shift+Space sometimes (maybe depending on order of release or speed; hard to guess) adds a space after doing the Bksp/Del action. This seems to not be an issue with the other solution involving process-unmapped-keys.

[cybardev]

For the sake of completeness, and for anyone (including myself) referring to this thread in the future, here's how I did it in NixOS:

services.kanata = {
  enable = true;
  keyboards = {
    "kbd" = {
      config = ''
        (defsrc)
        (deflayer default)
        (defoverrides
          (esc) (caps)
          (caps) (esc)
          (lsft spc) (bspc)
          (rsft spc) (del)
        )
      '';
      extraDefCfg = ''
        process-unmapped-keys yes
      '';
    };
  };
};

Example config (commit permalink): cybardev/nixos-dotfiles/configuration.nix