odd multikey issue

leviathan3k

i am using a 4 right now, and it seems it won't allow certain multikey combos to be pressed. shift for one does not work, but single letters that need multiple buttons do.

i am using a port of backspice from my old 3. shift and other key combos do appear to be working with the default layout though.

q335r49

leviathan3k

Can I get a copy of that backspice port? Thanks

DanielWhite

I also just received my Twiddler 4, and can't combine the Shift, Alt, Ctrl (T2, T3 and T4) buttons with letters when using the backspice keyboard. These work correctly with the standard keyboard.
I upgraded backspice with the Tuner to the latest format 6.
However, if I hold down the Shift button on the Twiddler and use my normal keyboard to press a key, that button will be capitalized.
It seems like this simply isn't considered a valid key combination on the Twiddler.
My firmware is 2.13, although I am unsure if this is the latest, since there are no available downloads on the site for Twiddler 4.

leviathan3k

Here is the source for backspice. You will need to import it in, then copy it as a v6 mapping for a twiddler 4.

https://github.com/AlexBravo/Twiddler

Geoff

You've gotta manually add all the combinations of modifier keys now. I reckon this is to support the ability to use the thumb keys for any purpose.

Below is my left arrow key, for instance: haven't added in all the Alt combinations yet. Hoping they publish the config file format soon so I can look at automating parts of this. Or perhaps the tuner could have a button that allowed the generation of modifier chords?

| Thumbs | Fingers | Actions | |--------|----------|---------------------------------------------------| | |1R 3L 4M |[KB]<LeftArrow> | |1 |1R 3L 4M |[KB]<L-GUI><LeftArrow></L-GUI> | |3 |1R 3L 4M |[KB]|<L-Ctrl><LeftArrow></L-Ctrl> | |4 |1R 3L 4M |[KB]<L-Shift><LeftArrow></L-Shift> | |34 |1R 3L 4M |[KB]<L-Ctrl><L-Shift><LeftArrow></L-Shift></L-Ctrl>|

Tony

Geoff

You've gotta manually add all the combinations of modifier keys now. I reckon this is to support the ability to use the thumb keys for any purpose.

This is the correct answer. Before the T(1-4) keys were "modifiers". This facilitated the ability to just "shift" an existing chord. This also meant that you could not reassign these keys to do anything but modify. With the new V6 config, this limitation was removed at the cost of having to explicitly add Shifted, Ctrl'd, and Alt'd chords within the config file.

leviathan3k

there is also some strange behavior where some of the multikey combos are misread.

the "th" combo is, for some reason, being read as n. i have not gone through others, but i am hitting this one a ton.

Geoff

leviathan3k Is that happening on backspice? I'm getting it on my layout too: https://forum.mytwiddler.com/d/21-multi-keystroke-entry-mismatch.

Geoff

Hey Tony, how much effort would it be to do one shot modifier keys?

Flow would look something like

Tap a chord, activating Ctrl / Alt / Shift / GUI etc but only for the next keypress
Tap the key of your choice, picking up on the modifier
Subsequent keypresses don't have a modifier effect

Folks would likely program chords for alphanumeric and common keyboard shortcuts, as this is faster, but one shot modifiers feel like a very workable approach to facilitate less common combos where the infrequent usage means it's not worth the hassle of adding chords.

Hey other folks, assuming what I'm asking is possible / not a lot of development effort, does it work for you?

In terms of prioritisation I still see the multi keypress chord mismatch as a bigger blocker to T4 adoption.

DanielWhite

This feels like a major bug, that will prevent all new users from using existing keyboard layouts.
It makes more sense to allow Shift, Ctrl and Alt to work as expected, and to allow chords to be overwritten.
You could also add a button in the Tuner to automatically map existing keys to combine logically with Shift, Ctrl and Alt.

It really doesn't make sense to force users to remap 50+ keys for each of these, when they actually want them to behave like Shift, Ctrl and Alt. Why add more flexibility, but make things people spent months working on stop working? Twiddler is great because of all the work of the community making it more user friendly. Don't ruin that.

Geoff

From my perspective it's suboptimal. It hasn't been particularly well communicated. But I also see some relatively easy paths forward. Any one of these would reduce the impact:

Publish a workaround using stickykeys. I haven't come up with one but it feels like it'd help.
Assuming tekgear staff have access to easier config methods than us, they could publish more layouts. (Backspice, mirrorwalk, oran and so on.)
Publish the config file format in the hopes someone works on a command line or similar tool for working on it.
Have a button on the tuner that generates ctrl, shift, alt (plus permutations) variants of the currently selected chord. To me it's okay if this doesn't work if a thumb key already forms part of the chord.

From a prioritisation point of view I see the multi character chord output mismatch issue as more pressing. The T4 is of limited value without it being resolved. (This is written on my T3.)

leviathan3k

Geoff Agreed on all points.

That last fix of auto-adding seems at least possible, since it will add the default special keys to a layout that doesn't have them already.

I suspect it's not quite as simple to do so for this much autogeneration, as it will both severely inflate map size, plus it will require analysis of the existing map to figure out what to add, which may be much harder than it looks.

Geoff

leviathan3k

I suspect it's not quite as simple to do so for this much autogeneration, as it will both severely inflate map size...

Oh, yes, very true. I'm picturing more of something folks would pick for specific keys, rather than all of them.

Mind you, I have over 300 entries on my T3 and that works fine. Not sure when large map sizes would start causing problems. Might not be much of a barrier.

banditjoj

Would be great if there's an easier work around for this than manually adding each individual combination of Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Ctrl+Shift, Alt+Shift, Ctrl+Alt+Shift etc. I use Twiddler primarily for keyboard shortcut workflow which involves a lot of combinations of modifier keys, just started making my Twiddler 4 config and would be quite a pain to have to remap every single letter and modifier key combination.

brandonwillard

banditjoj I wrote myself a small script that adds all the modifier key combinations to existing chords in CSV format: https://github.com/brandonwillard/twiddler/blob/main/twiddler_add_modifier_keys.py. It needs a means of converting the resulting CSV to a CFG, though.

banditjoj

brandonwillard Thanks! I've accepted having to do it manually, this'll make it easier to keep track

Tony

banditjoj This is the way...

brandonwillard

Tony any plans to release the spec for the new CFG version soon? With that I could add CSV-to-CFG conversion and make this a whole lot easier.

datacyclist

brandonwillard CSV-to-CFG would be awesome. I'm currently re-adding a whole layout from the CSV file by hand.

Tony

No. The current config V6 is the roll out config. In under a week, we've been seeing the community push the envelope of the V6 format. Sure, lots of these issues are edge cases but they need to be addressed, nonetheless.

Once we have a CFG format that addresses all these issues, we will release the CFG spec.

brandonwillard

Tony any chance for a CSV-to-CFG feature in the Tuner app?