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Toward a more useful keyboard

Steve Losh's Modern Space Cadet is an inspiration. It opened my eyes to the fact that there's a more useful keyboard hidden inside the vanilla QWERTY package that most of us have tolerated for all these years. This repo represents my nascent quest to unleash that more useful keyboard.

At first, this might sound no different than the typical Emacs/Vim/<Every-Other-Editor> tweakfest. But it is. I'm not talking about honing my editor-of-choice. I'm not talking about pimping out my shell. I want a more useful keyboard everywhere. Whether I'm in my editor, in the terminal, in the browser, or in Keynote, I want a more useful keyboard.

And ideally, I want the same (more useful) keyboard in every app. Ubiquitous keyboarding. Muscle memory. Don't make me think.

How do I go to the beginning of the line in this app? The same way I go to the beginning of the line in every app! Don't make me think.

How do I go to the top of the file/screen/page in this app? The same way I... Well, you get the point.

More useful (for me)

cus·tom·ize (verb): to modify or build according to individual or personal specifications or preference [dictionary.com]

Any customization is, by definition, personal. While I find that these customizations yield a more-useful keyboard for me, they might not feel like a win for you.

Features

A more useful caps lock key

By repurposing the anachronistic <kbd>caps lock</kbd> key, we can make <kbd>control</kbd> and <kbd>escape</kbd> accessible via the home row.

📣 Shout-out to @arbelt and @jasoncodes for the implementation. ⚡️🍻🌟

(S)uper (D)uper Mode

To activate, push the <kbd>s</kbd> and <kbd>d</kbd> keys simultaneously and hold them down. Now you're in (S)uper (D)uper Mode. It's like a secret keyboard inside your keyboard. (Whoa.) It's optimized for keeping you on the home row, or very close to it. Now you can:

<img width="400" alt="(S)uper (D)uper Mode Keybindings" src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/2988/22397420/f2b3e346-e53e-11e6-97bb-9db71f86994b.png">

📣 Shout-out to Karabiner's Simultaneous vi Mode for providing the inspiration for (S)uper (D)uper Mode. ⌨:neckbeard:✨

Window Layout Mode

Quickly arrange and resize windows in common configurations, using keyboard shortcuts that are on or near the home row. (Or, feel free to choose your own keyboard shortcuts.)

Default keybindings

Use <kbd>control</kbd> + <kbd>s</kbd> to turn on Window Layout Mode. Then, use any shortcut below to make windows do your bidding. For example, to send the window left, hit <kbd>control</kbd> + <kbd>s</kbd>, and then hit <kbd>h</kbd>.

<img src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/2988/22397114/715cc12e-e538-11e6-9dcd-b3447af0d9dd.png" alt="Window Layout Mode Keybindings (1)" width="400"/> <img src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/2988/22397111/45672fe6-e538-11e6-905d-5b0234e290bb.png" alt="Window Layout Mode Keybindings (2)" width="400"/>

Choose your own keybindings

Window Layout Mode ships with the default keybindings above, but you're welcome to personalize this setup. See hammerspoon/windows-bindings-defaults.lua for instructions on configuring shortcuts to your personal taste.

Markdown Mode

Perform common Markdown-formatting tasks anywhere that you're editing text (e.g., in a GitHub comment, in your editor, in your email client).

Use <kbd>control</kbd> + <kbd>m</kbd> to turn on Markdown Mode. Then, use any shortcut below to perform an action. For example, to format the selected text as bold in Markdown, hit <kbd>control</kbd> + <kbd>m</kbd>, and then <kbd>b</kbd>.

Hyper key for quickly launching apps

macOS doesn't have a native <kbd>hyper</kbd> key. But thanks to Karabiner-Elements, we can create our own. In this setup, we'll use the <kbd>right option</kbd> key as our <kbd>hyper</kbd> key.

With a new modifier key defined, we open a whole world of possibilities. I find it especially useful for providing global shortcuts for launching apps.

Choose your own apps

Hyper Mode ships with the default keybindings below, but you'll likely want to personalize this setup. See hammerspoon/hyper-apps-defaults.lua for instructions on configuring shortcuts to launch your most commonly-used apps.

Default app keybindings

Miscellaneous goodness

Dependencies

This setup is honed and tested with the following dependencies.

Installation

  1. Grab the bits

    git clone https://github.com/jasonrudolph/keyboard.git ~/.keyboard

cd ~/.keyboard

script/setup

  2. Enable accessibility to allow Hammerspoon to do its thing [screenshot]

  3. You'll be prompted to allow Karabiner-Elements to load its kernel extension, followed by a flurry of prompts related to input monitoring. Follow the prompts to upgrade your life.