Is it possible press a key (e.g. ctrl) and have it stay activated until pressed again?

[t-cadet]

Hi, I am fairly new to Kanata, I have made a few layers and like it so far but I ran into an issue trying to add the following:

I have a layer that changes my home row into arrow keys, this is handy to navigate text, but I would also like to navigate word by word (by holding down ctrl) and select text (by holding down shift).

Pressing both these keys while also pressing the arrow layer toggle key and arrow keys is inconvenient, so I am wondering if there is a way to press a ctrl or shift key, and have it stay pressed/activated until I press it again.

I went over all actions in https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/main/docs/config.adoc#actions but I could not find a way to do this.

[rszyma]

You can achieve that using fake keys: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/main/docs/config.adoc#fake-keys

[t-cadet]

Thank you, I was able to use fake keys to activate/deactivate CTRL with a config that looks like

(defsrc
	q w
)

(deffakekeys
	ctl lctl
)

(defalias
	pcl (on-press-fakekey ctl press)
	rcl (on-press-fakekey ctl release)
)

(deflayer use-fake-keys
	@pcl @rcl
)

However from there I could not figure out how to toggle the activation/deactivation with only one key. I think it would require fake keys to support a toggle kind of action, or the ability to access the state of modifiers and select an action based on that in the config.

I ended up using the cmd action and a bash script based on xdotool to get the toggle down to one key.

[rszyma]

However from there I could not figure out how to toggle the activation/deactivation with only one key.

I've had a similar problem before, and it can be solved without using cmd. Take a look at this: #393

[gerhard-h]

I think (fork (on-press-fakekey ctl press) (on-press-fakekey ctl release) (lctl)) should do the trick.

[rszyma]

But something like toggle action for fakekeys seems useful to have. Any thoughts on this @jtroo?

[jtroo]

Yea, toggle seems like a reasonable action to add.

Would be simple enough to add here:

https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/0cf5829e4df4d659e0e37178742599b3a7ab41ff/src/kanata/mod.rs#L987C1-L1002C26

Need to select to press vs. release based on the existence of any state matching the coordinate:

https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/0cf5829e4df4d659e0e37178742599b3a7ab41ff/keyberon/src/layout.rs#L172C1-L196C2

[jtroo]

For posterity, this is now imlemented in the latest main, though not in any built release.