UNRELEASED
When Chrysalis detects that an USB device has disconnected, it now correctly propagates that event, and properly records the disconnect event at all levels. This fixes an issue where disconnecting a device had Chrysalis not act upon it until one tried to communicate with the keyboard, resulting in a wide variety of seemingly random errors.
When connected to keyboards that do not have the LayerNames plugin enabled -
such as the firmware for the Keyboardio Model 01 Chrysalis ships with - do not
erroneously disable saving changes to the keymap.
When a key that has a modifier as its secondary action set is selected, Chrysalis no longer shows the key being augmented with the same modifier, it only shows the secondary action.
The instructions for how to assign colors and use the color picker have been corrected.
It is no longer possible to accidentally select the text of multiple keys on the keymap.
Key outlines on the Keyboardio Model 01 and Model 100 have been improved, the borders around the keys are slightly more visible now. The palm keys' border stroke has been further increased, to account for their angle.
The "Layout Cards" screen now has a "Print" button.
Chrysalis now allows selecting the rest of the right-side modifiers to be used
as secondary action, not just AltGr.
Released on 2022-09-28
Chrysalis now knows about Apple's Screen Lock, Globe, Exposé, and Mission Control keys, and allows putting them onto the keymap.
The Keyboardio Model 100 and Model 01 keyboards now display single-character labels on the keyboard in a larger font. Additionally, the active key is now highlighted with a more visible border now, matching the theme used by Chrysalis.
The Firmware Update screen has received significant changes: the explanation of the update options have been removed, the buttons provided along them should hold all the required information. Furthermore, the way to do a factory reset along with a firmware update has been made easier, and more discoverable: you can now select that method with a prominently displayed switch, rather than a separate button.
Resetting the EEPROM to factory defaults via the Preferences menu no longer spins forever.
Chrysalis no longer allows saving changes on the Layout & Colormap Editor screen if the layer names set would overflow the available space, and will display an alert notifying you about it.
The instructions for the Keyboardio Model 01 and Model 100 have been updated to match the most recent version of the flashing process.
The firmware shipped with Chrysalis have been updated, see its own changelog for more details.
Released on 2022-09-26
The firmware shipped with Chrysalis have been updated, see its own changelog for more details. The new firmware should fix both the firmware issues mentioned in previous Chrysalis releases, and the data corruption people were seeing on the Model 100. Upgrading the firmware is highly recommended.
Additionally, the firmware version is now completely decoupled from Chrysalis' version, and we recommend keeping the firmware auto-update feature enabled.
Due to the severity of the firmware bug, if Chrysalis detects a Model 100, it will display a message on the keyboard selection screen, urging you to upgrade your firmware. If you've already done that, this message can be dismissed with the close button, and will not appear again.
Chrysalis will now correctly detect if the Steno plugin is enabled, and will
display the associated keys on the Editor screen's sidebar if the plugin is
present.
Chrysalis now defaults to enabling firmware auto-update by default. You can still opt out of it, and existing settings will not be overwritten.
Released on 2022-09-22
The workaround we introduced in 0.11.1 to combat the firmware issue we're still investigating had an unfortunate side effect of interacting badly with the firmware in certain, frequently occurring cases. This could result in corrupted data being saved to the keyboard. We have squashed this bug in this release of Chrysalis.
Chrysalis now ships with a Colemak DH layout for the Keyboardio Model 100 to match the keycaps also available for the keyboard.
Released on 2022-09-21
Chrysalis now supports configuring a few SpaceCadet-related settings, such as
whether it should be enabled by default or not. This feature requires
firmware-side support too, and the firmwares shipped with Chrysalis do not have
the necessary plugin enabled yet. Custom firmware with the SpaceCadetConfig
plugin will let Chrysalis configure the plugin, however.
Due to an oversight, Chrysalis 0.11.1 shipped without bundling the dfu-util
tool, which we use for flashing new firmware onto the Keyboardio Model 100. As
such, firmware flashing was broken. This release corrects that, and we now ship
with dfu-util again.
The floating key picker Chrysalis displays on the Layout Editor screen was using
a very non-standard layout, neither ISO, nor ANSI, in an attempt to show all
possible keys that can appear on a standard keyboard. However, we went too far
with that, and ended up including a key (just to the left of the Return key)
that was unnecessary. It wasn't just unnecessary, it was a frequent source of
confusion and mistakes. That key has now been removed. No functionality should
be lost as a result, because it wasn't working properly to begin with.
Similar to how the confirmation dialog that appears during flashing, the one that appears during a factory reset and flashing combo, will now show a "Continue" button rather than one with an "Ok" label.
The Keyboardio Atreus image will now display one-letter labels in a large font, even if the label has a text on the top of the key, too.
The auto-update preferences have been lifted out from the "User Interface" section onto their own.
Released on 2022-09-09
There is an as of yet unsolved bug in recent firmware built for the Keyboardio Model 100, which can result in the keyboard locking up and becoming unresponsive when larger amounts of data is sent to it via Focus. Chrysalis includes a workaround for this, but the side effect of that is that saving changes on a Model 100 is considerably slower than it should be.
When selecting the key layout you use on your computer, Chrysalis will now show a preview of the selected layout, so you do not have to visit the Layout Editor screen just to verify it is the correct one.
In Chrysalis 0.11.0, we fixed a bug that affected keys that are augmented by modifiers. The fix applied then ended up being too eager, and resulted in some keys being processed twice, and ending up with the wrong modifiers displayed. This has been addressed, and all modifier augmented labels should be correct now.
The confirmation dialog that appears during flashing will now show a "Continue" button, rather than one with an "Ok" label, because the new label fits the wording of the instructions better.
We have reduced the size of the pre-built binaries by a good few megabytes.
Released on 2022-07-28
Chrysalis is now able to automatically update not only itself, but the firmware files too, separately. This allows us to offer updated firmware without having to release a new version of Chrysalis, and without having to ask you to download them. The feature is disabled by default, and can be enabled on the Preferences screen.
When the running firmware supports it, Chrysalis is now able to set custom layer names, which will be displayed throughout the application instead of the default layer indexes.
We have completely redesigned the flashing process, to be safer, more reliable, and more durable. The process is now able to recover from a lot of scenarios where it previously either errored out, or was futilely trying to do the same thing forever, without changing anything. Most issues were around steps that involved rebooting the keyboard, and Chrysalis is now able to retry reboots, rather than just wait for the keyboard to magically transition to the desired state.
When Chrysalis can't identify the firmware version running on the connected keyboard, it will say so on the firmware update screen, rather than leaving the area blank.
After printing something, Chrysalis will now display a notification whether the operation succeeded or failed (to the best of its knowledge).
When printing the Layout Cards, the header will not appear in the print anymore. This only happens for the layout cards screen, the header will show up in print everywhere else.
The layer name column of the Overview panel on the Editor sidebar has been narrowed a little, as it was often taking up half of the width, while completely unnecessary.
When Chrysalis is configured to use an operating system-side layout other than the default US QWERTY, keys that are augmented by modifiers will now display correctly, respecting the selected layout, rather than displaying the modifier and the US QWERTY label.
The way Chrysalis processes the data source we use for keyboard layouts (Unicode CLDR) has been improved, to pick up more symbols - shifted symbols, in particular. This fixes the labels for a number of layouts where the shifted symbols on some keys were wrong.
We also improved the data loading process to take into account differences between macOS and Windows physical key layouts. Layouts that are loaded from the macOS set (only Croatian and Croatian-PC as of this writing) account for these small, but important differences.
The layouts are now properly alphabetically sorted too, including the groups they're in. English no longer sorts before Chinese.
Some time ago, we had to move some of the keycodes around to fix a bug, and Chrysalis was taught to offer a migration path if it encountered the old, legacy keycodes. A bug in the migration code that prevented it from running when clicking the "Migrate" button was squashed, and the functionality works again now.
The firmware shipped with Chrysalis have been updated, see its own changelog for more details.
Released on 2022-07-07
This release is purely a firmware update for both the Keyboardio Model 100 and the Keyboardio Atreus. There are no changes other than in the firmware files.
Both of these firmware updates fix important, breaking bugs in the firmware, and owners of these keyboards are strongly encouraged to update their firmware.
Released on 2022-07-06
Going forward, Chrysalis will be able to automatically update itself, without having to download the new version manually. This feature is opt-in, and has to be enabled in Preferences first. When disabled, it will still display a notification, but will not download or install it.
Chrysalis has been translated to Dutch, and we've made future translations - and the maintenance of them- simpler and more accessible.
There is a new option in Preferences, which lets you select whether printing the Layout Card screen will print one layer per page, or as many as fit.
Chrysalis now supports a number of new keys, such as F13-F24, and many more international symbols when using international layouts.
The Firmware Update screen has been redesigned, with the goal of making it simpler, to reduce the amount of unnecessary information shown, but still show everything essential and useful - even including information that was not available in prior Chrysalis releases.
The new screen will show a brief description, the current version of the firmware, and then allow you to choose whether to install the latest firmware shipped with Chrysalis, or select a custom firmware. The changes in the latest firmware can be viewed from the new Firmware Update screen.
Flashing instructions are not immediately shown, they will appear in the dialog that asks for confirmation, shown at a time, and in a way that puts bigger emphasis on it, without resulting in having too much information on the screen.
Going forward, Chrysalis will only ship with one variant of the firmware, there are no more "default" and "experimental" versions, just a single one, and it comes with its own changelog.
When exiting Chrysalis, or closing its main window, if there are any pending, unsaved changes, Chrysalis will first ask for confirmation before shutting down.
On Linux, installing the udev rules works once again.
User interface glitches when using Chrysalis at smaller window sizes have been fixed, and we have improved Chrysalis to scale down to smaller sizes better.
The factory reset option while installing new firmware has been restored. This feature has been broken for a good few releases, but is fixed now.
The Windows builds - similar to the macOS builds - are now signed, which should make installation simpler in the long run. We're also providing portable Windows executables that lets you run Chrysalis without installing it.
Released on 2022-06-09
By far the most important fix in this release is that we replaced the Windows version of the tool we use for flashing under the hood, to a version that actually works. Flashing should now work properly on Windows.
A slightly less severe, but equally frustrating bug that caused Chrysalis to hang when trying to import a layout from a file has also been squashed.
On Linux, when installing the udev rules, Chrysalis will now try to be more
cautious, and create the directory it tries to copy the rules to. This should
make the install procedure work on distributions that do not install
/etc/udev/rules.d by default.
When a keyboard layout other than "English (US)" is selected in Preferences, the layout is now properly loaded and initialized on application startup.
The dropdown used to select the language Chrysalis uses now functions correctly, and will show the active language.
Released on 2022-06-08
Iterating on the Macro Editing feature introduced in the last release, it is now possible to rearrange macro steps by dragging and dropping them.
Chrysalis can now configure the default LED mode to be used on keyboards that
support it. This requires the DefaultLEDModeConfig plugin on the firmware
side. The firmware Chrysalis ships with don't have it enabled yet.
All of the firmware files Chrysalis ships with have been updated. The new firmware contains bugfixes for the Keyboardio Model 100, which we hope will enable Chrysalis to connect to the keyboard properly.
If you are unable to connect Chrysalis to your Model 100, unplug the keyboard
first, hold down the PROG key, and plug it back in while still holding it.
That will put the keyboard into programmable mode, and Chrysalis will be able to
flash new firmware onto it.
We have improved our dark mode support, by making it possible to choose an option that follows the system theme preferences. If your system is set to use dark mode for applications, Chrysalis will respect that preference, if it is set to follow the system settings. This includes following automatic switching on systems that support it.
The Layout Editor will now - by default - hide features from the Sidebar that the currently running firmware does not support. This feature was added to reduce potential confusion, when the Layout Editor offered keys that the firmware did not support. The feature can be turned off on the Preferences screen.
After connecting to a Keyboard, Chrysalis will now switch the initial layer shown in the Layout Editor to the default layer, if it is set for the keyboard.
The configuration option that lets us configure whether Esc cancels OneShot or not has been moved from the Layout Editor sidebar onto the "My Keyboard" tab of the Preferences screen.
The Preferences screen has seen major improvements in this release too.
Chrysalis no longer ends up showing a white screen when trying to visit the "Developer Tools" section of the Preferences screen without being connected to a keyboard. Similarly, Chrysalis will properly handle stray files in the directory where it stores EEPROM backups, and will not end up on a white screen when it finds unexpected files.
Worked around an issue in Electron that caused Chrysalis to crash on Windows and macOS when trying to print.
Released on 2022-05-30
A long requested feature landed in Chrysalis this release: it now has a Macro Editor.
When the firmware supports it, Chrysalis now supports assigning dynamic macros to keys, and editing them within the application. Up to 32 such macros are supported, they can be of any length, limited only by storage space on the connected keyboard.
For now the Macro Editor is simple, plenty of convenience functions are planned in the future, but it is usable in its current form.
The experimental firmware for the Keyboardio Model 100 and Atreus both have support for this feature.
The Preferences screen has seen another large update: we have organized settings within a page into logically similar groups, improved and added plenty of help text and descriptions. We hope this is more discoverable, and less intimidating now.
Choosing the host-side keyboard layout has been moved from the bottom of the sidebar on the Layout Editor screen to the Preferences, for ease of use and better discoverability.
On the Layout Editor screen, the sidebar will now hide sections and functionality not supported by the firmware of the connected keyboard. This can be disabled in the Preferences screen.
The sidebar of the Layout Editor has also had a number of glitches fixed: dropdowns and other widgets should no longer overlap, among other things.
The flashing instructions for the Keyboardio Model 100 have been updated to match production keyboards, and a layout library has been added too.
We fixed an issue that prevented Chrysalis from connecting to keyboards on Windows, and we also improved Chrysalis' stability on Linux under Wayland.
Released on 2022-05-27
When upgrading the firmware, Chrysalis now makes the device specific instructions stand out. While we always had these instructions on the screen, they blended into the normal set of instructions, and were too easy to miss.
The Preferences screen has been updated to use a simpler, more consistent design, and the "Keyboard" and "Advanced Keyboard" tabs have been merged into "My Keyboard".
The style of the notifications Chrysalis uses have been updated to match the current, Material design of Chrysalis.
Layout Cards can optionally display the color map of each layer. This can be toggled in the "User Interface" tab of the Preferences.
Chrysalis will now save color maps correctly again.
The Firmware Upgrade screen has had numerous bugs squashed, and the steps of the flashing process are now displayed properly, and consistently. These are purely display fixes.
In case there are multiple Chrysalis-enabled devices present, and we go back to the Keyboard selection screen while being connected to one, Chrysalis will once again show the connected keyboard as the default selection in the menu.
Under Wayland, Chrysalis will disable GPU-accelerated rendering, because Chromium does not support that under Wayland yet. This allows Chrysalis to start up under Wayland out of the box, without further command-line arguments or workarounds, still using the Wayland backend.
Released on 2022-05-25
This release is mostly about stabilizing and improving the Keyboard.io Model 100 support, but comes with important fixes for other supported devices as well.
We have fixed numerous bugs in the Model 100 flashing process, which should now be as stable as the flashing process of any of the other supported keyboards. A part of these fixes is a new firmware, which fixes a number of shortcomings in the firmware-side handling of the protocol between the keyboard and Chrysalis.
Chrysalis also ships with updated udev rules for our Linux users, adding support for the Model 100.
During the flashing process, Chrysalis will now show a notification when the key held to enter programmable mode can be released.
All of the firmware files Chrysalis ships with have been updated. The new firmware brings a number of stability improvements, and bugfixes in the firmware side handling of the protocol between Kaleidoscope-powered keyboards and Chrysalis.
We're now shipping experimental firmware for the Keyboard.io Model 100 and the Atreus too, with additional plugins enabled. If you want to make use of secondary actions for select keys, or use sticky modifiers or layer keys, the experimental firmware has the necessary plugins enabled.
We have dropped support for the Dygma Raise, KBDFans KBD4x, and OLKB Planck keyboards. Our support for these devices haven't been up to the standards one would expect, so rather than carrying them around in an inferior state, we opted to remove support for the time being.
Released on 2022-05-20
This release brings set of new features that we hope will make Chrysalis even more useful! There likely will be a few rough edges around both these features, we'll be releasing frequent updates to address them swiftly.
The first new feature is a new screen: Layout Cards. On this screen, Chrysalis renders all your layers onto a single, printable screen. We also made it easy to print: just press Control+P (or Command+P on macOS), and you can print any screen, including the layout cards.
We have redesigned the way you pick keys in the layout editor: rather than picking a key to modify on the keymap, mousing over to the sidebar, selecting "Pick a key", then find the key on the 104-key keyboard image that pops up, we now have a permanent, floating key selector at the bottom of the screen. You select the key you want to change on the keyboard, then click the key you want on the floating selector, and you're done!
Rearranging the standard set of keys is one of the most common things people do with Chrysalis. We hope this new selector makes the experience not only more convenient, but faster and more efficient too!
The previous release introduced a new feature where every time a keyboard is flashed, it's configuration (the EEPROM) gets automatically backed up, and the "Backup & Restore" feature of the Editor offers these backups for restoration.
Unfortunately, these backups weren't device-type specific, so Chrysalis would happily offer a backup made on an Atreus when restoring to a Model01. We have fixed that, and Chrysalis will only offer backups for restoration for the same type of keyboard.
Additionally, we also fixed an issue where the "Backup & Restore" screen made the application unresponsive until one flashed new firmware onto a keyboard.
Released on 2022-05-20
Chrysalis will now save and restore the keyboard configuration during the flashing process. This in turn makes the upgrade process more resilient, because if the layout of the configuration changes on the firmware side, our restore procedure will do the right thing, and rearrange the old layout to fit the new.
As it happens, between 0.8.6 and 0.9.1, we shipped firmware that did change the layout, which resulted in the keyboard configuration getting slightly clobbered. If you have upgraded to such a firmware, and have fixed the problem yourself, upgrading to 0.9.2 will not clobber it again. If you have upgraded, but not fixed it yet, you can downgrade to Chrysalis 0.8.6 first, downgrade to the firmware shipped with that version, and then upgrading to 0.9.2 and its firmware will automatically fix the problem. If you have not upgraded to such a firmware, upgrading now will do the right thing.
Additionally, each time you flash new firmware, a backup of the keyboard configuration is saved to a file under Chrysalis's application data folder. These files can be used for recovery in case something does go wrong: the "Backup & restore" screen (accessible via the Editor) will offer these backups automatically.
When there is a single supported keyboard available, Chrysalis will now automatically connect to it when starting up, removing the need to click the "Connect" button first.
Released on 2022-05-18
A number of small, but particularly painful display issues (such as the color swatches above the color picker being tiny) were fixed.
Released on 2022-05-17
Chrysalis now supports adding the dedicated OneShot cancel key to the keymap, and also allows us to change whether Escape will cancel one-shot keys too - enabled by default with the new firmwares shipped with Chrysalis.
Support for the upcoming Keyboardio Model 100 was added.
Chrysalis now ships with a custom Keyboardio color theme, and the Preferences screen has been redesigned to be more accessible.
The macOS builds of Chrysalis are now Universal packages, and should work on both x86-64 and M1 hardware.
Chrysalis should now launch properly on Linux distributions that aren't based on Debian.
Chrysalis' communication with the keyboard should be much more stable on macOS.
When selecting a layout used on the host other than the default English (US),
Chrysalis will now display the shifted symbols correctly too, when the shift
modifier is enabled for a key. Additionally, keys with secondary functionality
now display labels according to the selected layout properly.
Detecting hotplug events - when keyboards are connected or disconnected - has been greatly improved, and Chrysalis should be more responsive to these events now.
All of the firmware files Chrysalis ships with have been updated. All of the firmwares that had the OneShot plugin enabled, now also have EscapeOneShot enabled aswell, enabling the new feature mentioned above to function.
Chrysalis now has a new item in the menu: Changelog, which displays this very
news file at the time of building the release. With this available, one can
easily look at what changed between their previous version and the current one,
without leaving Chrysalis itself.
The layout editor sidebar had some of its sections redone for more clarity and easier access.
The "System Information" and "Feedback" menu items have been combined into a single screen, as both are about bug reporting.
"Layout sharing" has been renamed to "Backup and Restore", because that's what it essentially is.
Released on 2021-10-02
Fixed a typo in the Keyboardio Model01 flashing instructions.
The macOS pre-built binaries are signed once again, making their installation more straightforward and secure.
Released on 2021-09-27
All of the firmware files Chrysalis ships with has been updated, built with the latest Kaleidoscope. This fixes a large number of issues, mostly related to the OneShot, TapDance, and Qukeys plugins. Upgrading to newer firmware is highly recommended.
Flashing instructions for the Keyboardio Model01 and the Keyboardio Atreus have been improved.
The tooltip for sticky modifier keys no longer have the word "modifier" duplicated.
Released on 2021-04-05
This release has additional fixes for consumer keys, including a way to automatically migrate from old keycodes to new ones.
Released on 2021-03-29
Chrysalis now displays the correct labels for keys with a Secondary Action. We had an issue in the code that augmented the base keys with secondary actions, which resulted in a messed up keycode to label mapping. This bug has been fixed now.
Another issue related to labels is that Chrysalis and Kaleidoscope have been in a disagreement regarding consumer keys (volume keys, play/pause, and the rest) since a change in Kaleidoscope a while ago. This has also been corrected, and Chrysalis now agrees with Kaleidoscope, and these keys will both display and function as expected.
The warning about insufficient permissions is now correctly restricted to show only on Linux, while it could erroneously appear on other operating systems before.
The key picker that pops up when selecting a standard key has been rearranged to resemble a more common 104-key layout. Originally, it was displayed at the bottom of the screen, and we wanted to save vertical space, but later on, we moved the picker from the bottom into a popup in the center, rendering the space saving attempt irrelevant, but we have not adapted the picker accordingly. We now did so, and it looks much more like a common keyboard does, and now offers some of the keys that we've been missing since 0.8.0.
Another major, noticable change is that the warning about using hardcoded and custom layers together is no longer a tiny line below the toolbar. As we no longer support such setups in Chrysalis, we want to make that clear, and not allow one to edit the keymap anyway. A non-blocking, short warning was found to be inadequate and not very self-explanatory. Therefore we made Chrysalis display an "Action Required" screen, with better, longer explanation, and a button more appropriately titled. Additionally, when selecting the option to switch to custom layers only, Chrysalis will also set the default layer back to zero, to avoid confusion. Furthermore, when Chrysalis detects an empty EEPROM, and decides to copy the built-in keymap to it, it will also set the keyboard up to use custom layers only. The practical consequence of this is that keyboards fresh out of the factory, or keyboards that get flashed with the "restore factory settings" option set will no longer unnecessarily trigger the warning.
We also made some smaller improvements, like having a default filename presented when exporting keymaps, and showing legends in a larger font when they're single-letter.
Chrysalis now allows you to choose Croatian as the host keyboard layout, and has initial support - albeit untested - for Wayland under Linux.
Released on 2021-01-28
Chrysalis will now correctly copy the built-in default keymap to the editable area of the keyboard. In practice, this means if you connect a brand new keyboard, Chrysalis will no longer show an empty keymap at start, but the factory defaults instead.
We fixed a bug that - under some circumstances - made Chrysalis show a warning about not having permissions to talk to the keyboard, even in cases, and on systems where it made no sense.
A number of display issues and user experience shortcomings were also addressed:
certain keys, when augmented with modifiers, showed up wrong, as [Object object], instead of their proper label. They now show up with the correct
label. Furthermore, Chrysalis no longer allows one to augment a modifier with
the same modifier, because that's an unrepresentable situation.
All of the firmware files Chrysalis ships with has been updated, built with the latest Kaleidoscope. This fixes an issue that resulted in Macro keys not working. If you're experiencing that problem, please update your firmware.
The overview section that shows the mappings for the currently selected key on every layer now has a short explanation on top of it.
Certain combinations of modifiers will be displayed with a shorter, perhaps more familiar name: Control-Shift-Alt will show up as Meh, while Control-Shift-Alt-Gui will show as Hyper.
Released on 2021-01-26
This release is primarily a bugfix release, with a number of small, but rather annoying issues ironed out.
Chrysalis will now correctly show the Show empty layers button in the overview
area, when there are empty layers to show. When selecting the target of a layer
change button, Chrysalis will correctly limit the available options to what is
available (limited either by available layers in EEPROM, or by firmware
limitations in case of certain types of layer keys).
Chrysalis will now correctly show macro keys when clicking the Macros...
button. Furthermore, it will now allow augmenting all standard keys with one
or more modifiers.
When Chrysalis detects that it does not have permission to talk to a device on Linux, the udev rule installation will now correctly function.
This release also fixes a few display issues, like the warnings that may display just below the title bar will no longer be partially shadowed by the sidebar on the Editor screen. Also, when we display a loading screen during longer operations, the spinning logo is now correctly displayed in production builds too.
In this release, we reworked how the host operating system layout selection works: we now load every available layout we ship with, and group them by language. The selector is also smarter when it comes to auto-completion: it now takes the entire text typed into account when narrowing possibilities.
Also introduced in this release is a custom key code entry widget on the Editor's sidebar. With this widget, you can set keys to custom key codes, or codes as of yet unknown to Chrysalis.
Due to Travis changing their pricing model, we can no longer use it for our automatic builds. We have switched to GitHub Actions, but in doing so, we lost access to a Linux/arm64 builder, and as such, we can't provide pre-build binaries for that platform anymore.
Furthermore, we currently do not sign our macOS builds - this is a temporary regression only, however.
Released on 2021-01-12
To make Chrysalis less resource intensive, and to avoid rare race conditions, instead of scanning for new devices every time a new USB device is connected or disconnected, we now scan periodically instead.
Chrysalis will also display a loading screen when performing actions that may take a long time - this should stop you from seeing temporary blank screens while slow work is being performed.
By far the biggest change in this release is the completely redesigned Editor screen. It now allows you to see every possible thing you can change on a single sidebar, making it considerably easier to navigate. It also offers a whole new key picker for the standard keyboard keys. On top of all that, it allows you to see the key mappings for the currently selected key on all layers.
Our goal with the new editor was to make it easier, faster and more straightforward to see your options, the possible mappings, and as much of the current layout as possible. We tried to reduce the number of clicks needed to change (or discover) the mapping of a key.
To aid us in debugging Chrysalis issues, we now have a System Information screen. This screen will offer to create a bundle of debug information, and save it into a file, which you can forward to the developers, or attach it to bug reports. We try hard not to include private information in the bundle, and Chrysalis offers you to review the bundle before saving it.
On Linux systems, when using systemd, Chrysalis will offer to install udev rules to aid in setting up the serial devices for supported keyboards to grant Chrysalis access to them.
We also now provide pre-built binaries for Linux/ARM64 platforms.
As a result of having a new Editor things, a few breaking changes had to be made, some permanent, some temporary. Chrysalis no longer supports mixing hardcoded and custom layers, and will prompt when it detects such a case, to automatically switch to using custom layers only. This is a permanent change going forward.
Additionally, we temporarily dropped support for layer copying and erasing - both of these will be coming back in a future update.
We also reworked layout sharing, which now exports and imports the whole layout, all layers included, instead of doing so on a per-layer basis. At a later point, we will allow more granularity.
Fixed an issue that resulted in Chrysalis displaying a white, blank screen when a device it was connected to, disconnected from the host. Fixed another issue on macOS, which made Chrysalis use excessive amounts of CPU.
All shipped firmware files have been updated to use the latest Kaleidoscope, and the latest layouts.
The macOS pre-built binaries are now signed, making their installation more straightforward and secure.
Released on 2020-07-03
Chrysalis now ships Colemak, Dvorak, and Qwerty layouts for the Keyboardio Atreus, ready to be imported from the Import / export page.
The MoveToLayer() family of layer switch keys are also supported starting with
this release of Chrysalis.
It is once again possible to flash custom firmware with Chrysalis.
All shipped firmware files have been updated to use the latest Kaleidoscope, and the latest layouts.
Chrysalis 0.7.8 was the same release as this, but with broken packaging. We opted to cut a new release and delisting the broken one.
Released on 2020-06-17
If a keyboard has only a single firmware variant, Chrysalis will not display a description anymore. Chances are, this variant is neither minimal, nor without bells and whistles.
All shipped firmware files have been updated to use the latest Kaleidoscope, and the latest layouts.
Released on 2020-06-17
When modifying the keymap to set a key up as a layer switch key, only offer layers in the selector that the firmware supports. If the firmware is limited to five layers, display only as much. If it is limited to ten, display ten.
When leaving a screen with unsaved changes, the dialog now asks if changes should be discarded, rather than canceled, to make it clearer what it actually does: discard the changes, not cancel the operation.
In the previous release, the AppImage build was modified to try and detect if the kernel has the necessary features for sandboxing. This detection wasn't entirely bulletproof, and at least on some kernels, the script exited instead of disabling the sandbox. This has been fixed, and the AppImage will now start up correctly.
Fixed a number of crashes related to not having a colormap when importing, or when clearing a layer. These features now correctly ignore the colormap if there isn't any to work with.
Released on 2020-05-05
The most important changes in this release are related to the firmware update process: it's much more robust and reliable now. First of all, we now try to find the serial port of the keyboard in bootloader mode after a reset, instead of assuming it will be the same port as prior to the reset. This should fix plenty of issues on Windows and macOS, where the assumption usually did not hold. Furthermore, we also support flashing with an external (but still bundled) program as a fallback measure for the rare case where our built-in flashing methods fail to work for one reason or the other.
When flashing, Chrysalis will display a progress bar, showing what step of the flashing process it is on, and which other steps are still ahead.
There's also an option to restore factory settings during flashing.
Apart from these improvements in flashing, Chrysalis will now try to auto-detect the language of the operating system, and use the same language, if available.
On Linux, prior to connecting to a keyboard, we now check device permissions, and display an error if they are insufficient. This makes it easier to discover this issue, without having to look at the developer console or the troubleshooting guide.
The AppImage we ship will automatically disable the sandbox if it detects a
kernel that doesn't have the necessary features for it. This allows people on
older distros/kernels to run the AppImage without having to add the
--no-sandbox command-line argument.
The Layout & Colormap editor screen now supports keyboards that only have an editable colormap, and no editable keymaps.
Also, the Num Lock key has been added to the key selector, and all lock keys
have been moved to the Modifiers group.
It is, again, possible to flash a keyboard already in bootloader mode. Chrysalis
will also ignore the Esc key on confirmation dialogs. This latter fix is
important, because on all of our supported keyboards that require a key to be
held to enter programmable mode, that key is mapped to Esc by default. We
don't want to cancel any confirmation dialogs while holding the Prog key.
- The application header bar should now display its text in white while in dark mode.
- When a keyboard disconnects while we have pending, unsaved changes, we now forget all about those, and restore the application bar to its normal state.
- Plenty of internal changes and cleanups were made in order to reduce errors and warnings on the developer console: we catch and handle more (expected) errors.
All shipped firmware files have been updated to use the latest Kaleidoscope, with plenty of bugfixes, including, but not limited to, restoring proper 6KRO support, so that the firmware will work correctly on the macOS login screen and older BIOSes that do not support NKRO.
Released on 2020-03-22
If the connected keyboard does not support LEDs, or the Colormap plugin is not enabled, do not display the layout/colormap switch button on the toolbar, and only mention "Layout Editor" on the editor screen.
The layout editor now also supports the "Mouse Forward" and "Mouse Backward" buttons for mice.
The default firmware shipped with Chrysalis for the Keyboardio Atreus has been updated to have a default layout that matches the layout card, and the intended factory layout for the keyboard.
Released on 2020-03-07
The issue with flashing the Keyboardio Model01 and the Atreus, where the keyboard required an unplug and a replug after flashing to become available again, has been fixed. Flashing will now result in a keyboard that's usable immediately after.
Released on 2020-03-07
When there's an update available, Chrysalis will now provide a link to the correct location on all platforms. We were previously providing a wrong link on Windows.
The flashing screen now correctly shows the default firmware for the upcoming Keyboardio Atreus. Additionally, the Atreus keymap image has been fixed to scale better to the available space, without the labels getting misaligned from the keys.
Released on 2020-03-06
Major improvements were made to the upcoming Keyboardio Atreus support: instead of displaying an outline of the keys, we now use an image of the keyboard as a background. This looks much more like the real keyboard. The font sizes for most keys were also increased, both to match the keycaps, and to make them easier to see.
When flashing new firmware onto the keyboard, Chrysalis now displays flashing instructions aswell.
A number of improvements were made to the key labels: Backspace is now
shortened to Bksp, which is much more standard; the arrow keys are now
displayed as Unicode arrow symbols; and digits show their shifted symbol on top
now. Additionally, the "Gui" key is now properly labeled on each operating
system: Super on Linux, Win on Windows, and Cmd on macOS.
Released on 2020-03-02
The biggest new feature in this release is support for the upcoming Keyboardio Atreus keyboard. Chrysalis now ships with full support for it, including a recent build of the firmware shipped with it.
Apart from that, for keyboards that support LEDs - like the Keyboardio Model01
-, Chrysalis now offers brightness controls, and if the IdleLEDs plugin is
enabled, the idle time after which the LEDs turn off can also be configured.
The "Settings" and "Keyboard Preferences" screens have been merged into a single "Preferences" screen, because having them split was confusing.
All of the shipped firmware files have been updated to use the latest Kaleidoscope version, too.
- We fixed a number of issues around importing keymaps.
- Notifications can - once again - be dismissed.
- One can now use
AltGras a modifier when setting up dual-use keys.
Released on 2019-08-23
We added an option to the preferences screen (under the "Advanced" section) to enable verbose logging. This is intended to aid us in discovering what's happening behind the scenes if something goes wrong. The logs are available on the developer console, which can be toggled in the same preferences section.
A number of timeouts were increased, in an attempt to fix flashing on OSX, when doing so via a Hub. The bundled firmwares were also updated to use a version of Kaleidoscope with a number of important issues fixed (such as the Colormap plugin coloring the wrong keys).
Released on 2019-07-29
Fixed an issue affecting OSX users, which prevented Chrysalis from being able to connect to the keyboard.
Released on 2019-07-19
The most visible change in this release is the redesigned color picker. The new one should be considerably friendlier, and easier to use. The bottom bar, where the palette colors and the key selector are, is now visible by default too. Apart from these, we now have a rudimentary dark mode - far from polished, but a usable dark mode nevertheless.
We also made some small changes like moving the layer selection dropdown on the Editor screen to the right side, and changing the "clear layer" icon to something that conveys the intended meaning better.
To aid in troubleshooting, when flashing fails, we now display a button that opens the Troubleshooting page on our Wiki.
Plenty of bugs since the last release have been squashed, the color editor is much more stable and reliable now, copy-pasting and exporting-importing layers have also been fixed.
We also made sure that pre-built binaries work correctly on all platforms. The default and experimental firmware files were updated to their latest versions too, bringing in plenty of improvements and bugfixes.
Released on 2019-03-09
The biggest change in this release is that we merged the layout and colormap editors, they're available on the same screen now. Them being on separate screens turned out to be both confusing, and prone to errors. On the same screen, we have tighter integration, and editing one or the other requires far less clicking around.
Another important change is that we now ask for confirmation (instead of just dropping the changes on the floor) if we're about to throw away pending changes or do something destructive like clearing the layer. We hope this allows everyone to experiment more freely, as the chance of losing one's changes. We also changed the icon of the save button, to one that better conveys its meaning (it also has a tooltip now).
In spirit of making the Chrysalis experience less confusing, read-only layers are now visibly dimmed, to make it easier to see at a glance that they're not meant to be modified.
Because Chrysalis is still alpha-quality software, it sometimes gets confused if it encounters an EEPROM state it can't figure out, for one reason or the other. To make it easier to get out of this situation, it is now possible to clear the EEPROM, and reset it to factory settings.
For similar reasons, the sidebar will now show if there's a new version of Chrysalis available: if one's running a tagged release, and there's a new one, it will show that. If one's running a snapshot build, the update notice will show any new snapshot builds. It will not suggest upgrading from a release to a snapshot build, however.
We also added a way to export and import keymaps, colormaps and the palette. The interface for that is very, very minimal, and is in no way final. It does make it possible to transfer layers and colormaps from one keyboard to another.
Chrysalis now supports the Splitography keyboard, one designed to be used for Steno with Plover.
We fixed a fair amount of bugs, ranging from navigation issues to small subtle things that were confusing, like the keyboard image's strange jumps in size when resizing the window - that should be much smoother now.
Released on 2019-02-06
We have made major progress in all areas of Chrysalis, it should be much simpler and friendlier by now. We've received some amazing feedback, and tried to adjust the user experience accordingly. Please keep them coming!
The major highlight of this release is how the new layout editor works. It now tries its best to hide uninteresting details, and present you with an editable keymap out of the box. Hardcoded layers are not shown by default anymore, they are copied into editable memory on first use. This made it possible to move a number of knobs that were making the layout editor feel crowded, elsewhere.
Setting the default layer, whether to show hardcoded layers, and whether to use custom layers only all moved to the new "Keyboard settings" screen.
Major contributors to this release were @TreTuna, @obra, and @algernon.
Thanks to everyone who tried Chrysalis, gave feedback, or reported issues - your guidance drives Chrysalis forward.
Released on 2019-01-25
The previous release shipped with experimental firmware, but when it came to deciding what to upload to the keyboard, Chrysalis erroneously chose the default firmware even if the experimental was asked for. This has been corrected, and one can now upgrade to the experimental one.
Having transparent keys labeled [Trns] was both confusing and ugly. We now
show them as blank keys. To not confuse them with disabled keys, those are shown
with an "XXX" label until we implement a better way to distinguish the two.
Chrysalis can now properly display the non-US backslash / pipe keycode. It will also correctly label the SpaceCadet enable / disable keys (they were previously labeled SpaceCadet left/right, which was wrong).
Released on 2019-01-21
A number of screens were simplified and otherwise updated to be easier to discover and understand. Dropdown menus now look like drop downs, buttons are more prominent, and to the point.
The firmware update screen now displays device-specific instructions, when available.
Copying from another layer to the currently selected one turns out to be easier to work with, less surprising, and much less error prone. So the previous "Copy layer to..." feature was reversed, and now we can copy a layer from another instead.
When selecting a keyboard from the dropdown, we will now display the keyboard's image, if available.
It is now possible to connect to and update the firmware of a Keyboardio Model01 which is already in programmable mode, in the bootloader.
Similarly to the above, it is now possible to connect to any Teensy device in programmable mode, and upload custom firmware. Since we can't detect the keyboard in this case, Chrysalis will only offer the custom firmware option.
When clearing a layer, Chrysalis will now restore the default EEPROM value, instead of zeros. In practice, this means that when we clear a keymap layer, we'll get transparent keys instead of blanks.
Chrysalis now ships with two firmware variants for all boards:
- A default one, which is as close to the factory firmware as possible. It only has the essential plugins enabled, just enough to mimic the factory firmware and also work with Chrysalis.
- The experimental one, which still follows the factory firmware closely, but has a few extra plugins enabled.
The idea is that the default firmware shouldn't be surprising. We now have the experimental variant for testing features not in the original.
Released on 2019-01-17
When clearing or copying a layer, the top bar will switch to its contextual cancel mode, allowing us to cancel the clear.
The palette colors now have a border, so any bright white colored swatches will be visible too. We also made the color picker slightly wider, so the text on it fits better, and we made the two halves of the palette stay in place, whether the picker is shown or not.
The firmware Chrysalis ships with for the Keyboardio Model01 has been updated,
to fix a bug related to the Colormap plugin.
Updating the firmware of the Atreus and the ErgoDox should now work on Windows and OSX too, alongside Linux where it already worked before.
Released on 2019-01-15
The user interface underwent a major overhaul, in an attempt to follow the Material Guidelines more closely. The new interface should be simpler, cleaner, and more discoverable. We have also worked a lot on the various messages displayed, to have them provide better guidance.
It is now possible to copy one layer to another, making it easier to start from the built-in, read-only layers: we no longer have to manually recreate them on a writeable layer, but can start from a copy. Additionally, layers can also be cleared, would we want to start afresh.
Both the layout and the colormap editor supports these.
We already had UI in place for showing modifier-augmented keys, such as
Shift+2, but the controls were disabled - they no longer are. We can now put
keys on the keymap with modifiers applied to them.
Chrysalis now supports dual-use keys, both modifiers and layer keys. Dual-use keys perform one function when held (usually act as either a modifier or a layer shift key), and another when tapped. They're often used on smaller keyboards, and Chrysalis knows now how to handle them, and present them in a useful way.
When opening the layout editor, it will now start with the default layer selected instead of the first one.
When there are unsaved, pending changes, the top bar will change color, and the main menu turns into a cancel button. This allows us to undo any unsaved changes we made, and refresh the state from the keyboard.
Chrysalis can now be translated, and is available in English and Hungarian.
We made it easier to toggle the developer tools, in case something goes wrong (Chrysalis is alpha software!): pressing Ctrl+Shift+I will bring up the console.
The ErgoDox EZ (and any other ErgoDox that is compatible with the original) is now also supported.
For all hardware that does not come with Kaleidoscope as its default firmware, we no longer require them to be flashed with Kaleidoscope prior to using Chrysalis. Instead, we offer a firmware upgrade, with reasonable defaults - just like we do for boards that do come with Kaleidoscope by default.
Released on 2018-12-31
Chrysalis now supports the Atreus keyboard, when it is running a Chrysalis-enabled Kaleidoscope firmware. We ship with one, just in case.
Chrysalis also has preliminary support for Dygma Raise - it should work, but it is untested on real hardware at this time.
- The dropdown on the keyboard selection page will now list not only the ports, but which keyboard they belong to, too.
- The previous "Information" page was replaced by a bottom bar, providing the same functionality, in a more accessible place.
Released on 2018-12-24
Initial alpha release.