Hacker News Reader

Comment by kentonv | Hacker News Reader

I'm a longtime dvorak user. The shortcut issue is so bad I had to write software that makes the keyboard layout switch while ctrl/alt is held. I've used at least four different implementations of this, three I wrote myself:

https://github.com/kentonv/dvorak-qwerty

Maintaining this has been a big PITA though, and gets harder as operating systems increasingly don't want to support software intercepting keystrokes for security reasons.

I would not recommend learning dvorak, for this reason.

Colemak avoids this problem by leaving the most-important hotkeys where they are, so might be OK? But I haven't tried it, and I am not really sure how much benefit these alternative layouts really bring, TBH.

View on HN

This is interesting—my observations on Windows 10 (mostly with a layout arranged via MSKLC) have always been that it does some kind of QWERTY-on-Control thing which I'd actually like to turn off but never found out how to; my keyboard shortcut memory seems to indirect through keysyms in a way loosely symmetrical with how my Cinnamon FDO/Linux desktop handles things, rather than being position-based, with the exception of WASD-like game controls which are positional. Is the main difference with your utility that it handles Alt as well?

Hmm. I haven't actually used a Windows desktop for anything other than gaming in decades. Probably the last time I actually used my remapping tool on Windows was in the XP days. I guess it's possible that Windows 10+ now includes such functionality by default, but this would surprise me.

Why don't you modify the keyboard firmware so the layout switching and such happens on the keyboard, instead of intercepting things on the OS?

That sounds way more painful TBH...

Not if you have a keyboard with easily reflashable and programmable firmware (such as the Moonlander). If the firmware has built in support for layers it becomes trivial as you can just have a QWERTY layer activate when you hold down ctrl etc (Moonlander also)

It's actually quite easy! Of course, I wrote my own firmware for the keyboard I use so I'm biased, but most mechanical keyboards out there support QMK/VIA these days which makes it quite easy to create custom layouts and "layers" that activate based on what modifier keys are pressed.

Creating that firmware was one of the most fun and satisfying projects I've worked on in a long time.

I set up my keyboards this way - it’s pretty trivial with layers in QMK and means my Dvorak setup is fully portable between computers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com