Ďíáǩříťíǩád

I just thought that it's a shame the word diakritika does not have any diacritics in it.

Key points

• diakritika is a simple Windows daemon that allows you to type your favourite european language's modifiers (diacritics) in a way that does not twist your arm and does not take away your @s and #s and $s. You can now say goodbye to your horrible Czech keyboard!
• Program is controlled with a simple configuration file with hot-reload*.
• Sample config uses Czech letters for US layout and Ukrainian letters for the russian layout.
• The program automatically creates capitalized version of binding by adding Shift key to them.
• It also allows to bind letters on both of your Alts and use bindings like LAlt+s to paste š

Configuration

is simple:

• open bindings.ini
• start a new line
• put the letter you want to type into an []. For example, [ř]
• On the next line key add key combinations that should trigger this letter, one binding per line (see an example below).
  • Program automatically detects characters from config:
  • Everything with a length of 1 character is a string symbol
  • Everything that starts with 0x will be treated as a scancode
  • Otherwise assuming that this is a virtual key name without "VK_" and trying to construct a virtual key (ref: src/win/keyboard_vk.rs:87)

⚠ You are also not restricted to simple bindings like alt+s, you can do something like ctrl+n+m+F2 to paste a shit emoji and it should be fine.

Here is a sample bindings.ini file with Czech and Ukrainian letters:

; US->Cz
[á]
alt+a
[č]
alt+c
[ď]
alt+d
[é]
lalt+e
[ě]
ralt+e
[í]
alt+i
[ň]
alt+n
[ó]
alt+o
[ř]
alt+r
[š]
alt+s
[ť]
alt+t
[ú]
lalt+u
[ů]
ralt+u
[ý]
alt+y
[ž]
alt+z

; Ru->UA
[і]
ALT+ы
ALT+s
[ї]
win+ы
alt+ъ
alt+]
[є]
ALT+э
ALT+'

*hot reload is not implemented yet

TODO:

• Add logging with log instead of prints
• Clean up mixed Debug and Display traits for structures
• Remove unneeded winapi features
• Resolve conflicts and don't add conflicting bindings
• Hot reload of last good configuration. Inotify / etc?
• Auto-add program to system startup with admin rights (without admin access the software can't control administrator's applications which is a shame)
• GitHub CI because manually generating builds is pain
• Add support of different things instead of typing letters? for example, running scripts
• I still don't quite like how program handles repeating characters with alt key pressed. and especially with altGr. It works and works great, but not perfect
• Flexible hotkey rules. For example, make hotkey strictly ordered, or withold keyboard events from being sent until the hotkey is complete
• Disable application console window and make a tray icon
• More examples for different european languages (if you'd like to contribute a hotkey list for your language feel free to open an issue)