Karabiner-elements: [Enhancement] Different key mappings on different keyboards w/o switching profile

[starsy]

I have made some enhancements to KBE to remove the pain of switching profiles for 2+ keyboards by supporting per-device configuration. Please take a look at https://github.com/starsy/Karabiner-Elements if you are interested in. The release/download link is here: https://github.com/starsy/Karabiner-Elements/releases/tag/v1.0_merged . Pull request is here: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/pull/752. It works pretty stably on my MBPR, I think it worths a try. Hope it can solve your problems too. Please don't hesitate to let me know if any issues or questions.

[palme1337]

Very nice! I will have to try this out. Does the original karabiner support this kind of thing?

[starsy]

@palme1337 the old karabiner supported it, however the new karabiner elements doesn't, hope one day the official version would support it. I just released a new version with minor enhancement, feel free to try and let me know any comments.

[txchen]

This is so useful for those who have external keyboards. Please merge @starsy 's PR.

[eytanhanig]

This is exactly what we need!

@starsy Can you do an official pull request to merge this into the original tekezo/Karabiner-Elements codebase?

[starsy]

@eytanhanig I have opened a pull request, but @tekezo is not responding to it. I put some thoughts in another thread: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/issues/792 now i copy them here to explain what I think as the reason.

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Yes, i opened a pull request quite long ago, @tekezo didn't respond to it. I think there could be several reasons, as @tekezo not sending any words, this is my pure guess:

• The change itself is big in terms both code size and scope. There are several thousands of lines of change, from PreferenceWindow to KarabinerKit to libkrb to device_grabber to console_user_server, from ObjectiveC to C to C++, the only thing not touched is the kernel module. It is difficult to review so much code change at one time and to merge w/o a throughout review is risky and not responsible for the large KBE user groups.
• The configuration file format requires a change which introduce a backward compatibility issue to the wide user groups again. The initial KBE's config file has no per device key mapping support in design -- this is quite strange because it is there in the old KB feature set. I have to change the config file format in a non-backward compatible way to support it, hmmm @tekezo i would like to blame this to you. 😞
• @tekezo maintains a very nice suite of unit test cases for his code as quality guarantee. But due to a wide spectrum of changes, especially the changes in device_grabber and its low level dependencies, many of the C/C++ function interfaces has been changed, which breaks the unit test suite. i haven't decided to update them due to the workload and the necessity. But if @tekezo is willing to accept the pull request, i would be glad to extend the change to unit test suite.
• Code style. when you look deep into the code, @tekezo has his very own taste in how to write C++ code. the whole device_grabber and user_console_server is composed purely by .hpp, which means both the class/function definitions and implementations are put in header files. this is definitely debatable with certain limitations like long build time -- not be able to do parallel compiling, the cross-reference class types across header files is cumbersome or impossible. Thus I introduced a few new .cpp files to address these challenges, however it apparently broke @tekezo 's code style purity and paradigms.
• KBE is obviously @tekezo 's own baby when looking at the contribution history. There is no other significant contributors to the project, @tekezo may just want to keep his total ownership on this, which is understandable.

So I have created this fork as https://github.com/starsy/Karabiner-Elements , the "master" branch is for stable release and the "follow" branch keeps tracking and following KBE original's change, in case one day @tekezo would like to accept it, it can be done quickly. The stable release and pre-built packages can be found in "Release" section. Once the recently added complex configuration in KBE original is stabilized, I would like to review the difficulty and necessity to extend this highly demanded feature to it.

[wincent]

See: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/commit/fd90e595e1d8c1cf972e6694b85be294b773954c

[starsy]

@wincent very cool!

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[Hongbo-Miao]

Activate

[wincent]

This issue should be closed (functionality already exists via device_if/device_unless).

[gibfahn]

This issue should be closed (functionality already exists via device_if/device_unless).

It's also in the UI:

[Hongbo-Miao]

I just tried, oh yeah, it works perfect! Thanks for help.
It can be closed

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.