noobie, tried kanata.kbd on Windows but not working?

[harveym42]

i tried in cmd, kanata.exe -c kanata.kbd
pressing and holding a,e,i,o just prints those letters almost immediately. I expected they would become hold keys, to access various layers. this happens almost immediately despite setting timeouts to 6000 instead of 200. altthough there is a sight delay (under a second, consistent with 200ms).

also I can't tell from the documentation, how tap/hold keys are supposed to interact in detail. if I rapidly type (press) SCAN, but S,C,A, are tap-hold keyes, and N is not, I would expect pressing N must immediately send SCAN so long as S,C,A have not been held long enough` to act as hold keys, even if they were all down at the time, and that releasing S,C,A later would do nothing. ie. SCAN was then obviously what what was intended. Similarly releasing A before it becomes a hold key would send SCA, even if S,C were down at the time, and releasing S,C later would do nothing. ie. when fast typing I need to focus on the sequence of key-downs, and not worry about key-ups. But the description of tap-hold-press seems to be about activating the hold action immediately when another key is pressed, whereas, what I would expect is most needed, is that during normal fast typing, it is the TAP actions which we need to be preserved and immediately activated, and in exactly the same sequence as any such keys were originaly pressed down,. is that not the case?
I just chose SCAN as an exampe to think about keys being mapped to SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, for example, but they could be any keys.

this was touched on in a AHK project called dual.ahk, which saves the keys pressed down in a buffer and replays them in sequece when needed, although i'm not sure that was implemented exactly as I just described it.
thanks!

[jtroo]

The kanata.kbd default layer has no special behaviours other than the backtick key.

[harveym42]

i read the comments to say it showcased every possible behaviour? e.g. this part
( i increased 200 to 2000 or 6000)

  anm (tap-hold 6000 6000 a @num)   ;; tap: a      hold: numbers layer
  oar (tap-hold 6000 6000 o @arr)   ;; tap: o      hold: arrows layer
  ech (tap-hold 2000 2000 e @chr)   ;; tap: e      hold: chords layer
  umc (tap-hold 2000 2000 u @msc)   ;; tap: u      hold: misc layer
  grl (tap-hold 200 200 grv @lay) ;; tap: grave  hold: layers layer
  .ms (tap-hold 200 200 . @mse)   ;; tap: .      hold: mouse layer
  ifk (tap-hold 200 200 i @fks)   ;; tap: i      hold: fake keys layer

[jtroo]

Did you use the backtick key to first move to a layer with more special behaviours?

;; The first layer defined is the layer that will be active by default when
;; kanata starts up. This layer is the standard QWERTY layout except for the
;; backtick/grave key (@grl) which is an alias for a tap-hold key.

Also please use triple backticks for configurations to avoid pinging people with @.

[jtroo]

You may be interested in setting both tap and hold to the same action and then defining the true "hold" action to the timeout position in the -timeout variants of tap-hold. Additionally a temporary rapid typing layer might be interesting. #502

[harveym42]

hi jtroo,
maybe,
there is a section in the comments,
;; There is another variant of tap-hold-release that takes a 5th parameter
;; that is a list of keys that will trigger an early tap.

;; tap: u hold: misc layer early tap if any of: (a o e) are pressed
umk (tap-hold-release-keys 200 200 u @msc (a o e))

;; tap: u hold: misc layer always tap if any of: (a o e) are pressed
uek (tap-hold-except-keys 200 200 u @msc (a o e))

an early tap is what is needed, but it should be not just the very next key that happens to be pressed, but any subsequent key that is pressed (or released) soon enough, that does emit a quick typing character (its tap character)
.

[harveym42]

with the (a o e ) there i the above example, is that referring to (a o e) from the defsrc
, ie. actual keys?

[jtroo]

At the top of the configuration file states:

This is a sample configuration file that showcases every feature in kanata.
A more detailed and less terse configuration guide is found here:

    https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/main/docs/config.adoc

You should consult the guide, which answers this question.

[harveym42]

thanks, I'm getting the layer behaviour now , but with the ( ' ) apostrophe/single quote, not the backtick/grave key (`) ? any idea why/ what to do? I have a UK keyboard.

the tap-hold method works differently from what I had in mind but i verified that it does preserve the key-down sequence , which is the main thing so it is very close, I will try the other suggestions at some point.