vikeys

Terminal user interface for key mappings in keyboard firmwares.

Inspired by vim it aims to make the editing a breeze.

This is not complete at this stage, initial support for ErgoDox and the tmk firmware is almost there.

Currently supported keyboards

• ErgoDox

Firmwares

• TMK Loading and saving of keymap.h files

Install

Note: This has only been tested on OS X so far This is a Node js application so the first thing you will need is NodeJS.

Install node

Then install vikeys: sudo npm install -g vikeys

For development and tweaking Instead of npm install, clone this repo and ln -s /path/to/working/copy/vikeys.js /usr/local/bin/vikeys

In order to have any use for this tool you need the firmware and the dependencies for compiliing and upload the firmware to you keyboard controller.

For ErgoDox, use the forked repoistory until it has been merged: Get ErgoDox fork

Other keyboards will probably want this instead:

Get TMK firmware

Other build dependencies, depending on you platform:

Get build dependencies

Usage

cd to your firmware keyboard directory, for example: cd ~/tmk_keyboard/keyboards/ergodox

You can load a keymap on start using: vikeys <name of keymap.h> or to just start vikeys with a blank keyboard. vikeys

Navigation

Vim keybindings are implemented wherever it makes sense, so you can use h, j, k and l to navigate, or use the arrow keys. The main menu will have focus when you start vikeys, from there you can navigate to the various sections described below. In the upper part of the screen you will see a visual representation of your keyboard. It will show what keys are mapped on the currently selected layer. You can change layer with the + and - keys.

Modes

Normal mode

Upon start the mode is "Normal" which means the navigation keys will work in the lower half of the screen. It is possible to work on the keyboard part of the screen from normal mode using the shift key in combination with the navigation keys (vi only). So for example to select the next key to the right from normal mode, hold down shift and press l.

Select mode

In order to use the regular arrow keys to navigate keys the mode can be changed to select mode. From normal mode press Shift-s or i. Press Escape to exit select mode. Multiple keys can be selected by pressing shift.

In select mode the following keys can be used:

• x - delete mapping (the mapping is pushed to the yank buffer)

• y - copy mapping (the mapping is pushed to the yank buffer)

• p - paste mapping

Command mode

Enter command mode with :. Enter a command and the command prompt at the bottom of the screen and press enter. Exit command mode with Escape or Ctrl-c.

Supported commands are:

• q - exit vikeys

More commands will be availble, save, load etc

Creating a new layout

Keyboards are defined in lib/keyboards.js, please send in a pull request if you want a new keyboard layout added.