xavv1 – 34 keys hybrid Layout & Combo

Keymap

Figma layouts made thanks to @madhanparthasar's Ortholinear Keyboard Keybinding Layout Tool 🙌

Origins

This layout is organic and keeps evolving based on:

• real needs: reduce hand gestures, reduce frequently used keystrokes, etc.
• exploration need: custom keebs offer a brand new experience and I love to explore what is possible out there

It's not a surprise that this keymap is a hybrid. It was inspired by 2 opposite approaches:

• Miryoku – a full-layer COLMAK-DH keymap, that has excellent principles:
  • Use layers instead of reaching.
  • Use both hands instead of contortions.
  • Use the home positions as much as possible.
  • Make full use of the thumbs.
  • Avoid unnecessary complications.
• Kombol – a combo-optimized keymapping. This extends Miryoku and removes some confusion for keys like [], {}, (), -=+, ' ", ; :, ... that I had some hard time mastering with Miryoku.

The QMK code is inspired by the aurora sweep_keymap from flinguenheld and the default Cantor keymap.

My code is probably NOT clean, I would NOT recommend using it as a starting point to create a brand new keymap. But you can explore some features and take the pieces you want.

Tap Dance

Thumbs layer switches

The default QMK behavior was not working for me. Imagine you have a number layer, activated with a Momentary layer switch "MO(layer)". Now you also have the "backspace" key on that same key.

• Keep the key down, it momentarily switches to the layer
• Release the key, it comes back to the root layer
• Tap the key, it triggers a backspace

This sounds all good. But now, you need to type a phone number quickly. Snap! You made a mistake with the numbers, let's lightning-fast backspace it and retype. Then reselect the layer. That's where QMK implementation of the MO switch was not OK to me. When you reselect the layer, if you are under the TAPPING_TERM (200ms) time since you tapped backspace, it will tap backspace again, even when stay pressed on the key; and the layer would no activate either.

This was quite frustrating to me. Especially that my ErgoDox EZ nailed this part. To solve this, I implemented the features/tap_dance.c part.

Arbitrations

The backspace key cannot be pressed long to remove a chain of characters until it's released. I'm very happy about this "limitation" because it forced me to learn better ways to remove text:

• use CMD + backspace to delete characters until the start of the line
• use OPT + backspace to delete characters until the start of the word
• use SHIFT + arrows to select the part of the text to remove (arrows allow for being triggered many times when kept pressed). This allows me to ensure the expected characters are selected before I press the backspace key – it's easier to fix a bad text selection than to undo a chain backspace with precision (generally the whole chain removal will be undone when you expect to only undo 1 or 2 characters)

Install

Add this repos as a git submodule inside the qmk_firmware/keyboards/cantor/keymaps folder:

cd qmk_firmware/keyboards/cantor/keymaps
git submodule add https://github.com/malparty/xavv1-remix.git
cd ../../../
make git-submodule
cd keyboards/cantor/keymaps/xavv1-remix

Compile and flash

Navigate into the keymap folder qmk_firmware/keyboards/cantor/keymaps/xavv1-remix.

Compile with qmk compile and flash both sides with qmk flash.