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Amalgamation.keylayout

is a mix of dvorak and qwerty for my personal needs.

Layout

keyboard-layout

(KLE)

Color Position
turquoise Dvorak
green Qwerty
yellow custom

Motivation

Out of frustration with the typing habits I formed over the period of using a computer (with qwerty), I switched to dvorak to practice touch typing from scratch. As I use the mouse with my right hand, but dvorak has the most common shortcuts like Cmd-c, Cmd-v, Cmd-t, Cmd-w and Cmd-f on the right side, I switched the Cmd-layer to qwerty like in macOS's Dvorak-QWERTY ⌘ (at the time I actually used MSKLC, here is an old klc-file for that and here is an old linux port that works by grabbing the input device).

In addition, I can't seem to hit the number row's leftmost key, 5, 6, 7 and its rightmost key accurately without looking (maybe my fingers are too short?), which is why I don't bind them at all and relocate the number-row to a custom numpad accessible through modifiers.

Changes

やっぱり、 having various applications not correctly recognizing the dead key that translates to symbols is too much trouble, especially in terminals and applications with vim mode. Version 1 actually had most symbols available by means of a dead key, now these are on regular keys again and dead keys have been removed altogether.

Installation

macOS

The keyboard layout consists of an xml file whose format is native to macOS, alongside some definitions for Karabiner Elements.

git clone https://github.com/imawizard/Amalgamation.keylayout layout
cd layout

# Copy the keylayout file to make it appear as input source in keyboard settings.
cp Amalgamation.keylayout "$HOME/Library/Keyboard Layouts/Amalgamation.keylayout" # for the current user
sudo cp Amalgamation.keylayout "/Library/Keyboard Layouts/Amalgamation.keylayout" # or for every user

# Copy the karabiner mappings to make them appear under karabiner's complex modifications.
curl -Lo karabiner-rules.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/imawizard/dotfiles/master/karabiner/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/Amalgamation.json
mkdir -p "$HOME/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications' && cp karabiner-rules.json "$_/Amalgamation.json"

Windows

The windows version is an ahk script that is to be interpreted or embedded with AutoHotkey. Furthermore it tries to mimic the keyboard experience on macOS by e.g. remapping the Alt-key to simulate Cmd or making the Return-key within Explorer rename files like in Finder, see amalgamation.ahk.

Resources

Layout analysis and letter frequency

macOS Text Keybindings

Tools and platform specifics

Linux grabbing input device

Linux XKB