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In the middle of the desert you can say anything you want

09 Feb 2023

Small update to my keyboard layout

EDIT God I’m stupid - this basically removes the Alt key from my keyboard. That I still need from time to time.

Wsll fix sometime later definitely.

I did a change to my keyboard layout that’s notable enough to actually merit its own small post: I added number keys on the right-hand default position through the addition of a level5.

The keyboard now looks like this: assets/kl_cut_new.png

I stole the idea of having numbers there from TODO Reddit post.

These keys - given how nice they are right where my right hand is - were mostly already taken both at levels 2-3-4 (Shift, Mod, Shift+Mod), so I decided to look into adding level5. Instead of editing the source of the layout - which didn’t immediately work for me and I gave up quickly - I reused the approach from the Caps-lock-LED-as-keyboard-layout-indicator, and passed it as a setxkbmap parameter.

I now activate the layout using the following line:

setxkbmap -option -option 'grp_led:caps' -option 'lv5:ralt_switch_lock' vv,ruua

lv5:ralt_switch_lock is an option I found in the [[garden/it/230208-1643 List of all xkbmap configuration options]], it activates level5 on the RALT/AltGr key.

So, now I can easily type 1-6 with my right hand, by pressing RALT with my right thumb (and without moving my fingers too far from their home row).

7-9 are special, as they are on the row immediately over the RALT key and the chord is very awkward, so I added them additionally as Mod+X - that is, the LALT key, and can type them with “left thumb to press LALT and right hand to press mwv/M,.”.

There’s no 0 because I can press it with my right ring finger without any effort.

Nel mezzo del deserto posso dire tutto quello che voglio.