7 minutes
Written: 2020-05-02 20:30 +0000
Updated: 2021-08-03 00:49 +0000
Refactoring Dotfiles For Colemak
A more actionable follow up to my personal recollections relating to my switch to Colemak.
Background
I have, in the past written about how I made the switch to Colemak. However, until recently, I was still trying to mimic the VIM keybindings from QWERTY. This is a post where I discuss the changes I made to ensure that I never have to stretch my fingers in odd ways again. The main idea is expressed well by vim-colemak.
Colemak layout: | QWERTY layout:
`12345 67890-= Move around: | (instead of) `12345 67890-=
qwfpg jluy;[]\ e | k qwert yuiop[]\
arstd HNEIo' h i | h l asdfg HJKL;'
zxcvb km,./ n | j zxcvb nm,./
Sudoers
It is important to note that the sudo command does not automatically pick up on your keyboard layout. It is best to set this explicitly. Use visudo and un-comment Defaults env_keep += "LANG LANGUAGE LINGUAS LC_* _XKB_CHARSET", or:
su
echo 'Defaults env_keep += "LANG LANGUAGE LINGUAS LC_* _XKB_CHARSET"' >> /etc/sudoers
Emacs
Though I have mentioned publicly, that I was using the regular QWERTY motion
keys, I realized I had actually started to use the mouse more often, simply
because it was a pain to navigate. Thankfully, emacs has evil-colemak-basics,
which is fabulous. For reference, these make it really easy for QWERTY users to
make the switch if they’re previously used to VIM bindings.
| Colemak | Qwerty | Action | States | At Qwerty position? | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
h, n, e, i | h, j, k, l | navigate | mnvo | yes | |
k, K | n, N | search next/previous | mnvo | yes | |
u, U | i, I | insert | _nv_ | yes | |
l | u | undo | _nv_ | yes | |
N | J | join lines | _nv_ | yes | |
E | K | lookup | mnv_ | yes | |
u | i | inner text object keymap | ___o | yes | |
f, F | e, E | jump to end of word | mnvo | yes | with t-f-j rotation |
t, T | f, f | jump to character | mnvo | yes | with t-f-j rotation |
j, J | t, T | jump until character | mnvo | no | with t-f-j rotation |
j, J | e, E | jump to end of word | mnvo | no | without t-f-j rotation |
Where the table above is from the fantastic readme.
I still had some issues, mostly relating to searching in buffers, so I ended
using swiper-isearch more which is a bonus too.
Visual Lines
Since I tend to keep visual-line-mode all the time, it makes sense to actually swap working with lines and visual lines.
To work this through this needs evil-better-visual-line.
(use-package! evil-better-visual-line
:after evil-colemak-basics
:config
(evil-better-visual-line-on)
(map! :map evil-colemak-basics-keymap
(:nvm "n" 'evil-better-visual-line-next-line
:nvm "e" 'evil-better-visual-line-previous-line
:nvm "g n" 'evil-next-line
:nvm "g e" 'evil-previous-line))
)
Pdf-Tools
For my doom-emacs configuration, I also set the following map:
(after! pdf-view
(add-hook! 'pdf-view-mode-hook (evil-colemak-basics-mode -1))
(map!
:map pdf-view-mode-map
:n "g g" #'pdf-view-first-page
:n "G" #'pdf-view-last-page
:n "N" #'pdf-view-next-page-command
:n "E" #'pdf-view-previous-page-command
:n "e" #'evil-collection-pdf-view-previous-line-or-previous-page
:n "n" #'evil-collection-pdf-view-next-line-or-next-page
)
Where the most important thing is the hook which removes the
evil-colemak-basics binding. Since it is a single mode and hook, after-hook!
is the same as after-hook1.
Window Management
Somehow these are not part of the evil-colemak defaults.
(after! evil
(map! :map evil-window-map
(:leader
(:prefix ("w" . "Select Window")
:n :desc "Left" "h" 'evil-window-left
:n :desc "Up" "e" 'evil-window-up
:n :desc "Down" "n" 'evil-window-down
:n :desc "Right" "i" 'evil-window-right
))
))
Search
Harmonizing with Vimium.
(after! evil (map! :map evil-motion-state-map
(:n :desc "Previous match" "K" 'evil-ex-search-previous
:n :desc "Next match" "k" 'evil-ex-search-next
:n :desc "Forward search" "/" 'evil-search-forward
)
))
Page Movement
Though this is more of a personal preference, I find it more natural to bind N and E to page-wise movement instead of join lines and lookup, since I almost never use those commands, and the movement keys echo what I expect elsewhere.
(after! evil
(map! :map evil-colemak-basics-keymap
:nv "N" 'evil-scroll-page-up
:nv "E" 'evil-scroll-page-down)
)
Evil Org
Annoyingly, evil-org-mode had a map which kept overriding all my other
settings. Thankfully it has a helper variable to set movement. I also do not
need this anyway, at-least not by default.
(after! org
(remove-hook 'org-mode-hook 'evil-org-mode)
(setq evil-org-movement-bindings
'((up . "e") (down . "n")
(left . "h") (right . "i"))
)
)
Vimium
I use the excellent vimium to make Chrome be a little less annoying. Luckily the Wiki seems to have a reasonable suggestion for colemak. The basic idea is to migrate the underlying keys directly to ensure very few manual changes are required.
mapkey n j
mapkey N J
mapkey e k
mapkey E K
mapkey i l
mapkey I L
mapkey k n
mapkey K N
mapkey l i
mapkey L I
mapkey j e
mapkey J E
Tridactyl
I still use the fantastic tridactyl for Firefox when I can. However, the bindings are slightly more involved, since there is no equivalent for the mapkey which Vimium has.
" Rebinds for colemak
" hjkl --> hnei
bind h scrollpx -50
bind n scrollline 10
bind e scrollline -10
bind i scrollpx 50
" HJKL --> HNEI
bind H back
bind N tabprev
bind E tabnext
bind I forward
Vim
For a lot of terminal edits, vim is still my editor of choice, and vim-colemak works without any trouble in my configuration.
Zsh
To ensure uniform bindings, I used to use bindkey -v but will need some minor
changes to that set up. I based this part of my configuration off the bindings
of bunnyfly.
bindkey -v
# Colemak.
bindkey -M vicmd "h" backward-char
bindkey -M vicmd "n" down-line-or-history
bindkey -M vicmd "e" up-line-or-history
bindkey -M vicmd "i" forward-char
bindkey -M vicmd "s" vi-insert
bindkey -M vicmd "S" vi-insert-bol
bindkey -M vicmd "k" vi-repeat-search
bindkey -M vicmd "K" vi-rev-repeat-search
bindkey -M vicmd "l" beginning-of-line
bindkey -M vicmd "L" end-of-line
bindkey -M vicmd "j" vi-forward-word-end
bindkey -M vicmd "J" vi-forward-blank-word-end
# Sane Undo, Redo, Backspace, Delete.
bindkey -M vicmd "u" undo
bindkey -M vicmd "U" redo
bindkey -M vicmd "^?" backward-delete-char
bindkey -M vicmd "^[[3~" delete-char
# Keep ctrl+r searching
bindkey -M viins '^R' history-incremental-pattern-search-forward
bindkey -M viins '^r' history-incremental-pattern-search-backward
Zathura
There is no better pdf viewer than zathura, and it also works for djvu and
friends. As a plus point, it normally has very reasonable vim bindings, and an
excellent configuration system, so we will leverage that. The best part is that
we can just add to it using include zathuraColemak or whatever so as to be
minimally invasive.
map h scroll left
map n scroll down
map e scroll up
map i scroll right
map N scroll half-down
map E scroll half-up
map k search forward
map K search backward
# For TOC navigation
map [index] o toggle_index
# hjkl → hnei
map [index] n navigate_index down
map [index] e navigate_index up
map [index] h navigate_index collapse
map [index] i navigate_index expand
map [index] H navigate_index collapse-all
map [index] I navigate_index expand-all
Zathura is a complicated beast, however, and my full configuration contains a lot more information.
i3
I have some bindings set up in terms of $left $right $up and $down, so it was simple to re-bind them.
set $left h
set $down n
set $up e
set $right i
MailMate
Sadly, one of the email clients I do use regularly of late is MailMate. It supports a rather rich set of keybindings placed, e.g. with "Library/Application Support/MailMate/Resources/KeyBindings/ColemakVIM.plist" configured as follows:
"c" = "newMessage:";
"/" = "searchAllMessages:";
"n" = "nextMessage:";
"e" = "previousMessage:";
"h" = "collapseThread:";
"i" = "expandThread:";
"H" = "rootOfThread:";
"I" = "lastOfThread:";
"N" = "nextThread:";
"E" = "previousThread:";
"o" = "openMessages:";
"x" = ( "deleteMessage:", "nextMessage:" ); // Defaults to going to the previous message
"a" = "archive:";
"s" = "toggleFlag:";
"!" = "moveToJunk:";
"r" = "reply:";
"R" = "replyAll:";
"f" = "forwardMessage:";
"^s" = "saveDocument:";
Conclusions
That seems to be it for now. If I think of more programs I use regularly which
allow VIM bindings, or keybindings in general, I’ll probably just update this
post. My full dotfiles are present here, and now include a colemak target.