Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr... hack.

[teika]

An implementation in C, "keydouble" is developed by "baskerville" aka "bloom" in the ArchLinux forum. See the web site hosted at github. You may find the news at the Arch forum thread.

[teika]

Xorg has released xf86-input-evdev-2.7.0. It has multitouch support.

I've merged it to my hack, which is available at the GIT repo, "master" branch. I don't make a release at least for a week, but you can try it. (It's been running for 30 min without problem. =)

To use the multitouch support, you need:
>=x11-base/xorg-server-1.11.99.901 (masked. enjoy)
>=x11-proto/inputproto-2.1.99.3
sys-libs/mtdev

At-home-modifier itself doesn't have any progress since the last release.

I don't have any multitouch device, so I won't test it.

Regards.

[teika]

Hi, folks. Not a news of ahm update, but of a good keyboard.

keyboard glossary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_technology
http://www.overclock.net/t/491752/mechanical-keyboard-guide

I recommend Japanese keyboards for at-home-modifier, because you can press many keys with thumbs. Image here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Japanese.svg

The bottom row of my keyboard is:
Esc-BS-Spc-Ret-Tab and
Alt-Shift-Ctrl-Shift-Alt
(The middle one is the space bar.) as described in the README of ahm. Japanese keyboards enable such stunt which is really comfy.

I use a membrane keyboard, whose touch is bad for your finger. There hasn't been good keyboards with enough many thumb keys.

Recently a new keyboard with "cherry mx brown switch", OWL-KB109BM(B)IIB, came out:
http://www.owltech.co.jp/products/keyboard/KB109BM_B_II/KB109BM_B_II.html (Japanese)
You can buy one from amozon.co.jp, at 8000 yen or so (roughly equal to $100; these days yen is high.). They offer an English interface, too. I dislike google/apple/amazon monopoly, though. (Who likes?)
There's also "cherry mx blue" one, OWL-KB109BM(B)II, too. They say blue is noisy.

There's already many other cherry switch or capacitive switch Japanese keyboards, but they have a long space bar, which doesn't suit my purpose.

I haven't bought yet. Not cheap, but interesting. Night night.

[hasufell]

has this bug been reported to

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/

if not, how are they supposed to know?

[teika]

Good question.

Peter Hutterer, a developer of X input drivers, said here that my fork couldn't be merged upstream, and I understand it's correct.

Fortunately, it's possible to do almost all totally in user space. keydouble can be recommended to some extent as a replacement of my hack. (But it interferes with e.g. AutoKey. Both Keydouble and AutKey use X Record extension.)

[teika]

At-home-modifier-2.7.1 is released. (Called whimsically 2.7.1, not 2.7.0.) It merges the upstream 2.7.0, but has no changes in ahm since 2.6.4.

Modifications from the upstream 2.7.0 are:
* An upstream bugfix of horizontal scroll, X.Org Bug 46205, is included. (The fix is published after the 2.7.0 release.)
* Added an option to configure script "--without-mtdev". The upstream code always checks mtdev, and enables it when found. If you don't pass the above option, it falls back to the original behavior.

I've added a USE flag "mtdev" to the ebuilds below. If you enable it, it's built with multitouch support. (sys-libs/mtdev is not yet stabilized.)

Read README for the details.

Ebuilds:
* xf86-input-evdev-2.7.0-r1.ebuild
* xf86-input-evdev-2.7.1.ebuild

Both compiles from the same source code. The former uses the Xorg's + my patch, while the latter downloads all from my repo. Obviously the former is safer.

Notice
Probably I don't develop any more this hack as a fork of xf86-input-evdev, by the reason in the previous post. (And personally I'm terribly weakened.)

If you want some progress, improve "Keydouble" or so. I'm also interested in a rewrite in Python, which will be easier to allow flexible configuration. (In reality I don't think I'll ever write one.) It'll be great if it's integrated to AutoKey, but the AutoKey developer is not interested.

To make these hacks more popular, you can upvote my answer here to a question on Emacs Pinky in StackOverflow.

Regards.

[teika]

At-home-modifier-2.7.3 is released. It merges the upstream 2.7.3, but has no changes in ahm itself since the last release, ahm-2.7.1.

Ebuilds:
* xf86-input-evdev-2.7.3-r1.ebuild
* xf86-input-evdev-2.7.3.ebuild

Both compiles from the same source code. The former uses the Xorg's + my patch, while the latter downloads all from my repo. Obviously the former is safer.

Regards.

[teika]

There's another alternative, xcape by Albin Olsson. It replaces keydouble and space2ctrl.

It's already available as x11-misc/xcape for Gentoo.

[teika]

Hi. I release at-home-modifier-2.8.0. It merges the upstream 2.8.0, but has no changes in ahm itself since the last release, ahm-2.7.3. Those with new devices may want to use it.

* Upstream news for 2.8.0

Ebuilds:
* xf86-input-evdev-2.8.0-r1.ebuild
* xf86-input-evdev-2.8.0.ebuild

Both compiles from the same source code. The former uses the Xorg's + my patch, while the latter downloads all from my repo. Obviously the former is safer.

Strictly speaking, dependency on sys-libs/mtdev is now mandatory, not optional any more. But it's already been so since 2.7.1 in the upstream. I guess it's ok.

Regards.

[teika]

Hi. Ahm-2.9.2 is released now. It's simply a merge of upstream-2.9.2, and ahm itself hasn't changed. Please see the first post of the thread for the installation info.

The website has migrated to gitlab.com: https://gitlab.com/at-home-modifier/at-home-modifier-evdev/wikis/home. The previous host gitorious.org will be closed in June.

My email address has changed, too. Read README.

Regards.

[steveL]

Hmm this is quite interesting.

Just wondering, why you didn't try to patch this into current xkb, as discussed. I appreciate that "xkb-2 was/is coming" but as he mentioned, "xkb2 has been coming since 2007."

I just think it would be more likely to get merged upstream if you were to implement it as "functionality that should be in xkb", including the current version.
That would make it more likely to get into 2.0 (if it's not vapourware) and in the interim you'd have your work merged, with no need to keep patching.

I haven't coded against either, mind; I'm just asking.

It's good to see Gentoo users hacking on code; keep it up. :-)

[teika]

Hi. Ahm-2.10.1 is released now. It's simply a merge of upstream-2.10.1, and ahm itself hasn't changed. It depends on xorg-server >= 1.18. [1] For the installation info, please see the first post of the thread.

[1] You can use older versions of xorg-server, but in that case, you have to resolve a file collision manually.

I noticed that ahm has just turned 5 years old. The initial commit of the ahm patch was on 29 Jan 2011.

Regards.

Off-topic: the current Japanese government doesn't like freedom of speech, suggesting stopping TV stations which are "biased", i.e. those that the ruling party doesn't like.[2] As a Japanese, it's a shame, and I've got repeatedly sick of 'em, who've got childish mind and brain. As for governments, Japan is resembling N/S Korea, China, Turkey, or Russia. (Please distinguish residents and their governments.)

(Don't expand this issue here. Use "off the wall" instead. Sorry for showing anger which is irrelevant to many of you.)

[2] tl;dr: [1] [2] [3] Maybe this blog post or else helps.

@steveL: Upstream will never merge this hack. (It's written in the posts you cited.)

[teika]

Ahm-2.10.3 is released now. It's simply a merge of upstream-2.10.3, and ahm itself hasn't changed. It depends on xorg-server >= 1.18. [1] For the installation info, please see the first post of the thread.

[1] You can use older versions of xorg-server, but in that case, you have to resolve a file collision manually.

Regards.

[teika]

For a Wayland replacement of my hack, you may find this post in the Archlinux BBS to be useful.

The upstream development of the evdev input driver seems to have almost stopped. (Only 3 commits in 2017.) It does not mean it's unusable. Keyboard is a mature device, so I think my hack remains to work for a coming few years. Of course earlier transition to the libinput driver makes the life less risky.

Regards

[teika]

Hi. "Cancellation by Long Press" is broken in some environments. Before an official release, I posted a fix patch in the Arch BBS.

[teika]

I here release ahm-2.10.6. The previous versions do not work with kernels >= 5.4, but this new version includes a workaround.

Get xf86-input-evdev-2.10.6-r1.ebuild, put it in your portage overlay, and emerge.

This version also includes a sample xorg.conf.d file. (But most readers must already have their own one; it's for newcomers.)

All the best.

EDIT:
ahm-2.10.6 provides a workaround for the kernel bug 206929, which was fixed in the kernels 5.6, 5.5.14 and 5.4.29.

[teika]

Hi. I received a report that "AhmTimeout" doesn't work. This affects when you switch your VT with Alt+Ctrl+F1/F2...

I'm not affected, but if you experience it too, see this Arch bbs post.

Regards.
_________________
Hack of easy Shift / Ctrl / AltGr etc; save your pinkies, type without drudgery: topic 865313

BTRFS - Biden & TRump, Fools Suck.

[teika]

Hi. I updated the ebuilds to EAPI=7 (and to xorg-3.eclass). Perhaps "emerge" has been complaining. Sorry for lagging.

The filename remains the same, i.e. it's xf86-input-evdev-2.10.6-r1.ebuild. Download it from here.

Ciao!

[teika]

Hi. I updated the ebuild, since the previous one fails to build now. The new ebuild, xf86-input-evdev-2.10.6-r3.ebuild, is found here.

But today I recommend "interception" + "dual function keys" over my hack, as nice folks of Arch say. See the first post of this thread.
(Sorry, I'm still using my own hack: p)

Regards.

[teika]

An ebuild for dual-function-keys is now available at bug # 813843. With it, you can get a half-ahm independent of X. But first you have to fetch the ebuild for app-misc/interception-tool.

See its homepage about how to use it.

I thank "hoelbezier" for submitting an ebuild of "interception". Without it, I would be left clueless.

# Well, to be comfortable enough, I think I have to create my own (in Python). (One reason is interception-tools' "mux" complicates things excessively. But I might be an idiot if I really carry it out. Agh.) Ideally together with interactive configurator.

Regards.

[teika]

FYI: The Arch Wiki page Input remap utilities lists similar software"s".

# Count softwares; it'll be very convenient and natural.

Cheers.