First of all that was a title clickbait. Title clickbaits are still legal in Mexico (I think). Jokes aside, I will show you how every key in your keyboard can be a leader key. Since most of the Emacs community are keyboard driven freaks, I hope you will see the potential in your workflow. ## What is KMonad? It is a program that lets you remap the keys of your keyboard. ## Install KMonad Download the executable from . Put it somewhere your PATH enviroment variable points. In my case I like to put executables in `$HOME/bin`. So I add this line `export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"` in the `.profile` file. Then run the following commands. # Add self to the input and uinput groups sudo usermod -aG input $USER sudo groupadd uinput sudo usermod -aG uinput $USER echo 'KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0660", GROUP="uinput", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/90-uinput.rules # This seems to be needed because uinput isn't compiled as a loadable module these days. # See https://github.com/chrippa/ds4drv/issues/93#issuecomment-265300511 echo uinput | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/uinput.conf For more info check . ## Create a KMonad configuration file mkdir -p ~/.config/kmonad touch ~/.config/kmonad/config.kbd ## Add system information On the top of `config.kbd` add the next. (defcfg input (device-file "") output (uinput-sink "KMonad kbd")) Go to `/dev/input/by-path/` or `/dev/input/by-id/` and look for any file ending in `kbd`. I think if your keyboard is plugable, it should appear in `/dev/input/by-id/` and your build-in laptop keyboard should appear in `/dev/input/by-path/`. In my case I am using my build-in laptop keyboard. This is what I added in the configuration file. Yours should be different, modify it with your information. (defcfg input (device-file "/dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd") output (uinput-sink "KMonad kbd")) `uinput-sink` will be the name given to the virtual keyboard that KMonad creates. You can write anything in there. ## Keyboard blueprint Now we need to create the blueprint of our keyboard. The layouts that will create later will base of this blueprint. This is the blueprint of my keyboard. Modify it as you need. (defsrc esc f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup caps a s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) ## Base layout (default) KMonad takes the first layout as the default layout. Let's create our first layout and named it `base`. And let's also swap `capslock` and `escape`. (deflayer base caps f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup esc a s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) Now if we run: kmonad ~/.config/kmonad/config.kbd You will notice that `capslock` and `escape` have been swaped. ## Create a second layout Let's call the second layout `syms`, short for symbols. First lets modify our `base layout` so when we hold `a`, it calls the `syms layout`. (deflayer base caps f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup esc (layer-toggle syms) s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) But that is too messy. Let's create an alias for that command. (defalias sym (layer-toggle syms)) And now we can modify out `base layout` like this: (deflayer base caps f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup esc @sym s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) Let's create our `syms layout`. We will start simple and just add two symbols to make everything more clear. (deflayer syms _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [ ] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ) Now if we if we run our configuration. kmonad ~/.config/kmonad/config.kbd When we hold `a` and press `j`, we get `[`. And when we hold `a` and press `k`, we get `]`. The bad news is that we lost the ability to type the letter `a`. ## Let's use `a` key a leader key From our last example let's modify the alias we made for calling the `syms layout`. (defalias sym (tap-next a (layer-toggle syms))) With this modification, if we just tap `a`, we get `a`. But if we hold `a` and press `j`, we get `[`. And also if we hold `a` and press `k`, we get `]`. ## Let's create another leader key (defcfg input (device-file "") output (uinput-sink "KMonad kbd")) (defalias sym (tap-next bspc (layer-toggle syms))) (defsrc esc f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup caps a s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) (deflayer base esc f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup @sym a s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) (deflayer syms _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ [ ] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ) That is a full configuration. In this configuration when we tap `caplocks`, get a `backspace`. If we hold `caplocks` and press `j`, we get `[`. If we hold `caplocks` and press `k`, we get `]`. And the good news is that we got rid of `caplocks` previous life functionality. ## Conclusion There is much more you can do with KMonad. I suggest you to read the [official tutorial](https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad/blob/master/keymap/tutorial.kbd) to learn more about KMonad. Now you know how covert every key in a leader key. One last thing. Since I use Linux Mint and Stumpwm. I added this line `kmonad $HOME/.config/kmonad/config.kbd &` to my `.profile` file, so kmonad starts when I log in. ## Extra (defcfg input (device-file "") output (uinput-sink "KMonad kbd")) (defalias d (tap-hold-next 150 d [) f (tap-hold-next 150 f ])) (defsrc esc f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup caps a s d f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) (deflayer base esc f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 f10 f11 f12 pause prnt ins del ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = bspc home tab q w e r t y u i o p [ ] ret pgup caps a s @d @f g h j k l ; ' \ pgdn lsft z x c v b n m , . / rsft up end lctl lmet lalt spc ralt cmps rctl left down rght ) If you hold `d` more than 150 milliseconds, you will get `[`. If you quickly tap `d`, you will get `d`. If you hold `f` more than 150 milliseconds, you will get `]`. If you quickly tap `f`, you will get `f`.

ram535

KMonad and the power of infinite leader keys

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