grave2esc

Transforming the GRAVE/TILDE key(`/~) to the ESC key, and vice-versa, for some 60%/70% layout keyboards.

NOTE: this tool is only for Linux, as a plugin for Interception Tools framework.

There are alternatives for other operating systems, for example:

macOS: Karabiner
Windows: Interception library

What is it?

Depending which physical key you have on your keyboard

If you only have GRAVE key (mode 0)
- Turn GRAVE into ESC, and at the same time:
- Turn Shift+GRAVE into TILDE
- Turn Alt+GRAVE into GRAVE
If you only have ESC key (mode 1)
- You already have physical ESC key, nice!
- Turn Shift+ESC into TILDE
- Turn Alt+ESC into GRAVE

Why?!

Because for smaller keyboards, esp. of 60%/70% layouts, the GRAVE key and the ESC key may not co-exist. And some keyboard firmware has ridiculous behaviour switching between them, let alone some firmware that is not customizable at all. This bothers particularly Vim users a lot!

Dependencies

Interception Tools

Building

$ git clone https://github.com/harry75369/grave2esc.git
$ cd grave2esc
$ cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ cmake --build build

Installation

$ sudo cmake --install build

Execution

grave2esc - transforming the GRAVE key to the ESC key

usage: grave2esc [-h]

options:
    -h        show this message and exit
    -m mode   0: (default) the physical key is GRAVE
              1: the physical key is ESC
    -c        enable capslock as control

grave2esc is an Interception Tools plugin. A suggested udevmon job configuration (check the Interception Tools README for alternatives) is:

(e.g. /etc/udevmon.yaml)

- JOB: intercept -g $DEVNODE | grave2esc -m 0 -c | uinput -d $DEVNODE
  DEVICE:
    EVENTS:
      EV_KEY: [KEY_GRAVE, KEY_ESC, KEY_LEFTSHIFT, KEY_RIGHTSHIFT, KEY_LEFTALT, KEY_RIGHTALT]

Then enable and start udevmon service, for example, by creating systemd service file /etc/systemd/system/udevmon.service

[Unit]
Description=udevmon
Wants=systemd-udev-settle.service
After=systemd-udev-settle.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nice -n -20 /usr/bin/udevmon -c /etc/udevmon.yaml

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and then start it with sudo systemctl enable --now udevmon

History

This library is forked from and based on caps2esc project.

License