- Type in Linux like it's a Mac. -
Seamless copy and paste with all apps and terminals. Also the only linux remapper that is aware of your cursor/caret status - meaning it avoids shortcut conflicts within an app versus wordwise shortcuts when a text field is in use.
Kinto works for standard Windows, Apple and Chromebook keyboards. The following however describes the dynamic rebinding based on a standard Windows keyboard. (Alt location is Cmd for Apple keyboards)
-
Normal apps - Alt will be Ctrl, Win/Super will be Alt, Ctrl will be Win/Super
-
Terminal apps - Alt will be Ctrl+Shift, Win/Super will be Alt, Ctrl will be Ctrl
-
Cursor/word-wise shortcut keys have been added to align with macOS keyboard shortcuts.
- Python (initial install only)
- systemd
- x11
- IBus*
- Debian/Ubuntu based distro 16.04+
If you need kintox11 recompiled for your distro please let me know and I will add a binary for your distro if my binary fails.
You can also attempt to compile kintox11.c on your system as well, but you will need to compile and install json-c first as its libraries will be required to compile and run the program.
*IBUS is needed to support wordwise during browser app usage as the keymap will need to change slightly depending if the cursor/caret is on screen waiting for input. Setup.py will set it but you can manually set it as well or check your current Input Method.
To confirm navigate to your "Language Support" and set "Keyboard input method system:" to IBus for full word-wise support with web browsers.
Wayland support is planned, but not ready yet.
- clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto.git
- Install python3 (If needed)
Debian or Ubuntu 16.04 or 18.04
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3
- Follow the prompts and the script will guide you through the rest of the setup.
./setup.py
Features
- Unlimited keyboard configurations per App/category (user_config.json - config -> create app object)
- Dynamic Desktop Environment shortcut capabilities (user_config.json - de -> create DE tweak/remap)
Located at ~/.config/kinto/ you will find user_config.json which will look like the following after an install. You can modify the defaults.json file in the root directory of kinto to create additional keyboard layout types/support without needing to modify any of the underlying Kinto code.
You can also add additional Desktop Environment related tweaks to user_config.json in the install directory as well and the installer will prompt you to install them. You may also fork and submit any json or additional .xkb configurations to me for approval if you believe it makes Linux more like typing on a Mac.
{"config":[{
"name":"gui",
"run":"setxkbmap -option;xkbcomp -w0 -I$HOME/.xkb ~/.xkb/keymap/kbd.mac.gui $DISPLAY",
"de":[2],
"appnames":[ "" ]
},
{
"name":"term",
"run":"setxkbmap -option;xkbcomp -w0 -I$HOME/.xkb ~/.xkb/keymap/kbd.mac.term $DISPLAY",
"de":[2],
"appnames":[ "Gnome-terminal","konsole","io.elementary.terminal","terminator","sakura","guake","tilda","xterm","eterm" ]
}],
"init": [1],
"detypes":["gnome2","gnome3","kde4","kde5","xfce","i3wm"],
"de":[{
"id": 1,
"type": ["gnome3"],
"active": false,
"intent":"init",
"name":"gnome-init",
"description":"Gnome - Remove Superkey Overlay keybinding to Activities Overview",
"run":"gsettings set org.gnome.mutter overlay-key ''",
"run_term":"",
"run_gui":""
},
{
"id": 2,
"type": ["gnome3"],
"active": false,
"intent":"gui_term",
"name":"Gnome Activities Overview",
"description":"Cmd+Space activates Activities Overview",
"run":"",
"run_term":"gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings panel-main-menu \"['<Control><Shift>Space']\"",
"run_gui":"gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings panel-main-menu \"['<Ctrl>Space']\""
},
{
"id": 3,
"type": ["kde5"],
"active": false,
"intent":"init",
"name":"kde-init",
"description":"KDE Plasma 5 - Removes Superkey Overlay from the Launcher Menu",
"run":"kwriteconfig5 --file ~/.config/kwinrc --group ModifierOnlyShortcuts --key Meta \"\";qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure",
"run_term":"",
"run_gui":""
}]
}
Under systemd this is how you control Kinto.
Status
systemctl --user status keyswap
Stop (and reset keyboard to normal)
systemctl --user stop keyswap && setxkbmap -option
Start
systemctl --user start keyswap
Restart
systemctl --user restart keyswap
Enable
systemctl --user enable keyswap
Disable
systemctl --user disable keyswap
You can use websites like https://www.shortcutfoo.com in Google Chrome while using the terminal style keymap, but Firefox is not compatible due to detecting "cmd" as keycode 224. Chrome detects Win/Super/Cmd as keycode 91 on all OS's.
To make sure you are in the terminal style keymap you can just simply open the terminal and turn off the kinto service, and then switch back to Chrome.
systemctl --user stop keyswap && setxkbmap -option;setxkbmap -option altwin:swap_alt_win
- Check the status
systemctl --user status keyswap
- Check the service journal
journalctl --user-unit=keyswap.service -b
You may need to manually set your DISPLAY in the systemd service file. Normally it pulls in the proper DISPLAY value but if it doesn't you can try this.
echo $DISPLAY
# :0.0
nano ~/.config/systemd/user/keyswap.service
...
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=always
Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0
...
If you continue to have issues then open a ticket and send me the info.
Now that Kinto is using a custom written C program I am not aware of any specific bugs or issues, but you can start here if you having difficulties and please report it if it is reproducible.
- Get status
systemctl --user status keyswap
- Restart Kinto
systemctl --user restart keyswap
- Check the Status again and open a ticket if you need to.
systemctl --user status keyswap
You can also do the following to see if it is an actual issue with kintox11 not running or your service file.
cd ~/.config/kinto
./kintox11
I'd appreciate any help from people with non-US based keyboards, to help ensure that these keymaps and keyswap methods work in all or most languages.
If you would like to attempt adding additional custom keymaps for other languages then I strongly recommend reading Glen Whitney's post here. https://superuser.com/questions/385748/binding-superc-superv-to-copy-and-paste
I welcome any and all contributors who want to contribute something to this project.
If you are specifically wanting to contribute additional custom keymaps to help with aligning Kinto's behavior to that of a mac keyboard then I would strongly recommend that you read Glen Whitney's comment on Superuser (the link is below). You may also look at the .xkb directory, mac_wordwise.sh and xactive.sh files to better understand how Kinto operates so that you can test your own keymaps without having to use the systemd service or running the xactive.sh script.
https://superuser.com/questions/385748/binding-superc-superv-to-copy-and-paste
https://medium.com/@benreaves/kinto-v1-0-released-2018e6401d2e https://medium.com/@benreaves/kinto-a-mac-inspired-keyboard-mapping-for-linux-58f731817c0
GPL v2
I would just like to thank a few people here directly that have helped me tremendously with completing this project and without their support, direct, indirect or otherwise I would have had difficulty completing this undertaking. I will list these things off in chronological order mostly.
First off I'd like to thank the Stackoverflow and Stackexchange community. I have probably rubbed some mods the wrong way over there, but the people from the community in general are extremely helpful and gracious and without their contributions would have made this much more difficult. The person I'd like to thank most though from over there is Glen Whitney. Without his detailed explaining of how to rebind keys in xkb this would not have come together at all, as every other remapping solution were non-starters as complexity increases.
Secondarily I'd like to thank Christian Eriksson*, as he provided information that kept me up at night.. literally. Even after I implemented a similar bash script to one he had suggested I knew that fully implementing a c/c++ solution was where Kinto needed to head to and his explaination was better than I remember it being now that I have gone back to read it again. He also never provided a full implementation of a c/c++ solution - he did hit on the pain points pretty well of what one would need to do and watch out for. I am not sure where I got the first example code of implementing a based solution, but he definitely went over it well.
Kui and his gist file** was really the c based solution that I found had the fewest issues to resolve to making it a reliable solution. It didn't account for all failures very well, aka BadWindow issues, but it made for a great foundation on which Kintox11 is built. I cannot thank him enough for putting it out there for others to work with.
Lastly these four people were also very helpful to me as well. @probonopd for being one of the first people to install and use Kinto and gave me the initial feedback to include wordwise support! He also has really great articles*** posted on HackerNews & Medium about UI/UX design. Another person I'd like to thank is @owzim, his feedback allowed me to rapidly iterate and fix several bugs to support additional platforms better. The last two are members of the #ubuntu channel in IRC on freenode, tarzeau ( @alexmyczko ) and sarnold. Alex contributing a proper Makefile, so the project can be packaged properly, and sarnold help me find that IBus could resolve an issue I was having with needing to detect the caret status.
If I left anyone out then I apologize, that was not intentional. I am happy to say that this project is at a state of completion. Bug fixes will primarily be the only activity happening going forward and possibly a rewrite for Wayland at some point. Contributions as mentioned above are welcomed, and will be merged into master if they help with the goal of making typing on linux more like a mac.
*https://askubuntu.com/questions/1010276/can-i-act-on-the-event-that-a-window-opens-without-polling **https://gist.github.com/kui/2622504 ***https://medium.com/@probonopd/make-it-simple-linux-desktop-usability-part-1-5fa0fb369b42