Doom-emacs: Support colemak keyboard layout

[ar1a]

Planning on trying out new layouts soon, figured maybe we should have a support module.

Might be based off https://github.com/wbolster/evil-colemak-basics ?

[JonathanReeve]

A big +1 for this. There is also the way Spacemacs does it.

[HaoZeke]

I've been using colemak for a year without needing any changes to the bindings, but I guess these might be better?

[JonathanReeve]

The Spacemacs method is just to swap out the keybindings hjkl for hnei. That way, you maintain the directional keys on the home row, like vim does.

[JonathanReeve]

FWIW, this is what's preventing me from switching to Doom from Spacemacs.

[wis]

I remap n e i o to h j k l, o+O to l+L, i+I to t+T and n+N to f+F

$ touch ~/.doom.d/bindings.el
.el (setq doom-leader-key "," doom-leader-alt-key ",") (map! :n "t" 'evil-insert :n "T" 'evil-insert-line :n "l" 'evil-open-below :n "L" 'evil-open-above :n "f" 'evil-ex-search-next :n "F" 'evil-ex-search-previous :n "n" 'evil-backward-char :n "e" 'evil-next-line :n "i" 'evil-previous-line :n "o" 'evil-forward-char )
load it at the end of ~/doom.d/config.el
$ echo '(load! "bindings")' >> ~/.doom.d/config.el
I couldn't find docs on the web for these special strings, but I could find them by emacs's describe-key,
ctrl+h then press k, then the key you want to find the special string for.

@JonathanReeve

[pauldub]

IMO evil-colemak-basics has the best keybindings for vim like colemak experience, if anyone is interesed in setting it up until there is a keyboard layout support, here is how I do it.

config.el

(use-package! evil-colemak-basics
  :after evil
  :config
  (setq evil-colemak-basics-rotate-t-f-j t))

(after! evil (global-evil-colemak-basics-mode))

packages.el

(package! evil-colemak-basics)

[neeasade]

I'm a colemak-DH user with my own key rotation going on -- I think a flexible option would be if I could redirect bindings in the map! macro itself somehow (something similar to how evil-collection does it)

[AnthonyDiGirolamo]

About to take the doom plunge myself. What is the recommended way to remap keys? Is wis's suggestion above the way to go?

I haven't met another colemak user who uses my bindings. It's sort of like half of what https://github.com/wbolster/evil-colemak-basics does. Here's what I do in vim

" h/l stay in default colemak locations
" n/e remapped to down up
nnoremap n gj|xnoremap n gj|onoremap n gj|
nnoremap e gk|xnoremap e gk|onoremap e gk|
" Use k/K for next/previous search hits
nnoremap k n|xnoremap k n|onoremap k n|
nnoremap K N|xnoremap K N|onoremap K N|

[HaoZeke]

About to take the doom plunge myself. What is the recommended way to remap keys? Is wis's suggestion above the way to go?

I haven't met another colemak user who uses my bindings. It's sort of like half of what https://github.com/wbolster/evil-colemak-basics does. Here's what I do in vim

" h/l stay in default colemak locations
" n/e remapped to down up
nnoremap n gj|xnoremap n gj|onoremap n gj|
nnoremap e gk|xnoremap e gk|onoremap e gk|
" Use k/K for next/previous search hits
nnoremap k n|xnoremap k n|onoremap k n|
nnoremap K N|xnoremap K N|onoremap K N|

I do have the k/K setup, along with the down/up; some details here