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qmk_firmware/keyboard/planck/keymaps/cbbrowne/readme.md

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cbbrowne custom keyboard

Due to cbbrowne@acm.org Christopher Browne

This was originally based on the default keyboard map, but I have been doing sundry experimentation:

  1. Experiments
  • To figure things out about the toolset
  • I'm an Emacs guy, so will be needing a fair bit of tuning
  • It made sense to mess around some with keyboard maps.
    • I tried added Workman alongside Dvorak and Colemak
      • Boy, oh boy, these don't help!!!
      • I have done 30 years of learning of Emacs key mappings, and these alternative keyboards massively mess me up
    • I added a keypad, originally based on keymaps/numpad.c, but mighty substantially revised, as that one seems to be rotated 90 degrees from usual conventions for number pads
  • The keypad layer also includes some sample "hacks" of cool things, all using actions attached in using the function action_get_macro()
    • Key [1][2] aka "q" types out my name, cbbrowne, as a fun example of a key generating a bunch of keystrokes. The keystroke is sufficiently inconvenient that it isn't terribly practical for me to use it, but hey, it shows how others might use this facility in a more useful context.
    • Key [2][2] aka "a" uses a random number generator to select a digit 0-9 at random
    • Key [3][2] aka "z" uses a random number generator to select a letter a-z at random
    • Key [1][3] aka "e" spits out the keymap version number
  1. Some code structure ideas

Each layer is given a name to aid in readability, which is then used in the keymap matrix below. The underscores do not denote anything - you can have a layer called STUFF or any other name.

Layer names don't all need to be of the same length, obviously, and you could also skip them entirely and just use numbers, though that means needing to manage the numbers.

It is preferable to keep the symbols short so that a line worth of key mappings fits compactly onto a line of code. It might be an interesting idea to express the maps rotated 90%, so that you only need to fit 4 symbols onto each line, rather than 12.

I used enums to manage layer IDs and macro IDs so that I don't need to care (beyond "start at 0", and arguably that's not needed) about their values.

  1. Things I did not like about the default mapping
  • I found control too hard to get to. I use it more than Tab, so switched it there.
  • Having dash on [lower-j] is a bit nonintuitive, but may be OK
  • I switched ESC/TAB/M(0) around
  • I'm suspicious that I want to shift M(0) from [4][1] to [4][2], and shift ESC off the first column so KC_LCTL and KC_LALT can be on the first column.
  • I needed to swap ' and ENTER