A GNU Emacs minor mode that allows binding commands to multiple simultaneously pressed keys.
TODO
TODO
This is inspired by key chord mode originally written by David
Andersson. Functionally key chord multiple is similar to key chord
mode, except that in key chord multiple you can define key chords
consisting of an arbitrary number of keys. This was not a trivial
change (look at the diff between this and key-chord.el), in fact
most of the code had to be rewritten. Therefore this will probably
remain a separate program, never to be merged with the original key
chord mode.
I think one of the biggest limitations of key chord mode is finding accessible key chords that do not conflict with normal typing. A proposed method to find good key chords is to use a dictionary in your language to test your key chord against. This helps but is not guaranteed to detect bad key chords, especially for programmers. After spending time attempting to find accessible key chords that do not conflict during regular Emacs use, I have come to the conclusion that they simply do not exist in large numbers. It is difficult to find > 10 key chords that are not part of your regular typing and are also easily accessible (personnally, the only keys that I consider accessible are all keys on the home row, the row above it and the row below it, so this does not include the number keys).
Key chord multiple provides a solution to this problem by allowing key chords to consist of an arbitrary number of keys. This makes it much easier to find key chords that work well for a user. It ofcourse also drastically increases the number of available, good key chords.
[TODO] maybe provide some fancy POC QWERTY keymap consisting of a bunch of stuff.
Compared to key chord mode the following functionality was lost:
- key chords in keyboard macros: I might add this back.
- key chords that consist of one key pressed multiple times: I myself probably won’t add this back as it is a feature I never used.
- describing key chords with `describe-key’ (C-h k): Probably won’t add this back either, as I don’t think it’s useful enough to justify the added complexity.
key chord multiple supports key chords that consist of an arbitrary number of keys, your keyboard however may not. A lot of cheap keyboards do not reliably detect 3 or more keys pressed simultaneously. If this problem affects you, the only thing you can do is to buy a better keyboard. Good keyboards will have NKR, which stands for N-key rollover. This means that it will reliably detect any combination of simultaneously pressed keys. Important to note (and something manufacturers sometimes don’t mention) is that NKR is not actually achievable over USB, only over PS/2. An NKR keyboard over USB should do 6KR though, which is more than sufficient.
To facilitate repeating a command by holding down the key chord ideally key up events would be monitored to detect when a key chord is released. The Emacs input system does not detect these types of events however. Mostly because in a non-graphical environment these types of events don’t exist.
It is possible to get this to work by polling keys using evtest
e.g.:
# evtest --query by-id/usb-04d9_USB-HID_Keyboard-event-kbd EV_KEY 30
Will return 10 when the ‘A’ key is pressed. Note that this has to run as root.