Set Numlock Status to specific state instead of toggle

[gerhard-h]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I lately wondered why some of my macros stopped working. But there was no issue with macros.
But I used kp1, kp2,... in the macor and had deactivated Numlock the day before.

Describe the solution you'd like
Having keys numlock_on / numlock_off that change the numlock if needed.

Additional context

• I don't know how much effort it is to get the current numlock state from the OS.
• If it is difficult you one could maybe make an asumption during kanata startup and than track the key.
• there was this other idea with integrating scripting within kanata config, maybe wait for that.

[jtroo]

I think it might be doable today with some effort. The cmd-output-keys action has been merged to main. Docs here.

It looks pretty simple to get the numlock status in powershell: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41234688

The read-only value [console]::NumberLock states what the Numlock status is.

[ShrykeWindgrace]

It looks pretty simple to get the numlock status in powershell: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41234688

The read-only value [console]::NumberLock states what the Numlock status is.

A bit of nitpicking - this would not necessarily work on *nix machine. On my Debian I get

PS>  [console]::NumberLock
OperationStopped: Operation is not supported on this platform.

I do not have access to a macos machine, but in my experience such low-level pwsh stuff works only on windows.

addendum

According to https://rajapet.com/2020/07/06/using-powershell-to-set-the-num-lock-state/,

on MacOS NumberLock would not work either.

[jtroo]

Good point! I mentioned powershell since I'm pretty sure gerhard-h uses Windows, but such advice would not apply in general. It would need to be substituted by some other mechanism on the respective OS.

E.g. in Linux it appears to be /usr/bin/setleds.

[Kobzol]

The command

sudo sh -c 'setleds +num < /dev/console'

seems to work on Linux, however not while kanata is running:

setleds: Unable to read keyboard flags: Inappropriate ioctl for device

[jtroo]

That's interesting that kanata stops it from working. A potential workaround would be to parse the output of setleds and conditionally send numlock or not, inside of a cmd-output-keys.

[jtroo]

Will convert this to a discussion - I don't think it's worth making a builtin feature when it can be scripted using existing features. Here's a sample for Windows; it should be fairly straightforward to adapt for Linux using setleds and some grep+sed.

(defalias
  ;; numlock yes
  nly (cmd-output-keys powershell.exe "if ($([console]::NumberLock) -match 'True') { echo '()' } else { echo '(nlck)' }")
  ;; numlock no
  nln (cmd-output-keys powershell.exe "if ($([console]::NumberLock) -match 'True') { echo '(nlck)' } else { echo '()' }")
)

If using multi with a macro, might need to add a delay at the beginning of the macro to mitigate race conditions since cmd actions run in a separate thread.