xavv1 – 34 keys hybrid Layout & Combo

Keymap

Figma layout 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 sweep_keymap from flinguenheld.

Tap Dance

Apps shortcuts doubled with long-tap

You'll find some tap-dance actions on the _MOUSE layer. For example: TD(TD_BROWSER). This allows the keyboard to respond to 2 different events: normal tap and long tap (down until the tapping term, then up).

I use that for:

• Browser: short tap is working/codding (Chrome) / long tap is personal browser (Brave).
• GitHub App / Figma App: as Figma is less used, it is mapped to the long tap.
• Rectangle (windows management for Mac): a normal tap moves the windows on another screen and a long tap makes the window full-screen.

See features/tap_dance.c for the implementation.

Refinements

• #define QUICK_TAP_TERM 0 disable the QUICK_TAP_TERM. This allows double-tapping a modifier key (and holding it on the second tap) and getting the hold action triggered. In the context of this keyboard, a simple example is "you tipped a wrong number, correct it with tap BCKSP then hold BCKSP (NUM LAYER) then your number. The double BACKSP requires activating the layer, not to switch to QUICK_TAP_TERM and repeat your backspace.
• This layout CANNOT use #define HOLD_ON_OTHER_KEY_PRESS due to the home-row modifier: this feature allows modifiers to trigger faster but prevents from rolling the home-row keys.

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.