Arrow keys are the bane of keyboard life. You constantly have to lift your hands off the home keys to move around your software file. Wordstar cursor control keys are the answer. This Linux key map defines Wordstar cursor control keys in xkb using capslock as the 'control' key.
This key map is a testament to what a desperate man can achieve with xkb. But it still has serious limitations, and now that xremap has come along, the main advantage is that the xkb installation does not require root access.
Note: ^ is an abbreviation for CapsLock
- ^S/^D moves left/right; ^E/^X moves up/down; ^A/^F word left/right; ^R/^C moves page Up/Down; ^U undo
- ^Q acts as a prefix, e.g. ^QS/^QD moves to Home/End of line; ^QR/^QC start/end of document
- ^Y/^QY = delete/cut to end of line; ^T = delete word to the right
- ^QF is find; ^L is re-find; ^QA is replace; ^QJ is goto line
- ^KB/^KK turns on block marking selection mode; ^KH hides it (unmark).
- ^KS save file
- ^KY yank (i.e. cut) block; ^KC copy block; ^KV paste block
- ^PB bold; ^PI italic
- ^N insert line break to the right
- ^Y instead of delete whole line, it deletes to end of line
- ^Backspace is delete word to the right
- ^B is bold (=ctrl-B)
- ^I is italic (=ctrl-I)
- ^QJ goto line number
It really is a shame that xkb doesn't let me issue two keystrokes or I could do a lot better. With two keystrokes I could implement:
- ^KY/^KC/^KV to automatically exit block mode. This would be much nicer to use.
- ^Y (delete to end of line) performs ctrl-Shift-Delete which deletes to end of paragraph in a word processor
- ^N (insert line) performs the key. There is no way to issue a second Left key afterward to make it stay on the same line like it should
- ^QE/^QX (top/bottom of page): there is no standard function to do this in linux
- ^W/^Z (scroll up/down) issues ctrl-Up/Down which works in my editor but in few other apps.
Consequently, it's not quite perfect. But given XKB's limitations, it's pretty good. Let me know if you know how to make XKB send multiple keystrokes from one key.
git clone <this_repository> wskeys
cd xkb/wskeys
./install
If you use the Wayland Display Server (which I think is now the Ubuntu default), then wskeys will not work because Weyland does not listen to the setxkbmap or xkbcomp commands. It is possible to get xkb key layouts working with Weyland at startup, but it requires that a rules file be created to map wskeys to a key layout option, and it requires wskeys files to be installed into the xkb system folder. This has yet to be implemented.
For now, you can switch to X Server instead of Wayland, or implement it yourself. To switch to X Server in Ubuntu, log out, look for the gear icon in the bottom right of the screen, and click the "Ubuntu with X" or similar option.
For whatever reason IntelliJ (and related products like GoLand) take control of the keyboard at a lower level and ignore the xkb rules. To get IntelliJ to work, you have to turn on "Use national layouts for shortcuts" in Settings > Keymap (reference).
If things go wrong, Damiano Venturin has a great little article on making key map changes in xkb. For more detailed stuff, I'm afraid the X Keyboard file format is poorly documented in far too many places. I found the following to be most useful.
Ivan Pascal's documentation is most in-depth and therefore most useful for this kind of thing. But most of it is no longer available except on the wayback machine here. He has an introductory article here; its links are rotten but you can find them again in the wayback machine link. You could also check out Doug Palmer's docs with particularly useful tables of what can go into key action statements and some Archlinux docs, but I think they're less helpful. Martin Krafft also has a nice article about the process he went through to learn how to load key maps with xkbcomp, which is what got me started; but again, his repository links have all changed (you can only track them down if you look into the git history around the same dates as the articles).