Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

teika · 2012-11-20 06:52:48

At-home-modifier-2.7.3 is released. It merges the upstream 2.7.3, but has no changes in ahm itself since the last release, 2.7.1.

Sources:
* The full source tarball
* The patch against Xorg's original 2.7.3

Regards.

teika · 2013-06-08 09:07:38

There's another alternative, xcape by Albin Olsson. It replaces keydouble and space2ctrl.

It's already in AUR.

teika · 2013-06-27 12:25:04

Hi. I release at-home-modifier-2.8.0. It merges the upstream 2.8.0, but has no changes in ahm itself since the last release, ahm-2.7.3. Those with new devices may want to use it.

* Upstream news for 2.8.0

Sources:
* The full source tarball
* The patch against Xorg's original 2.8.0

AUR:
* 2.6.4 entry
* git latest entry

Strictly speaking, dependency on the package mtdev is now mandatory, not optional any more. But it's already been so since 2.7.1 in the upstream. I guess it's ok.

Regards.

Salkay · 2014-05-22 02:36:08

Hi, I bought a Truly Ergonomic Keyboard a couple of years ago, and I've found at-home-modifier to be perfect for it! Specifically, I remap Alt to the central Enter key. Otherwise, Alt-tab is almost impossible! Thank you so much for developing it.

Previously, I've used Ubuntu, and Yuri Kahn's PPA. However, I'm now interested in moving to Arch. Has at-home-modifier been discontinued in AUR? I can see that the latest ahm is version 2.6.4-1, but xf86-input-evdev is now 2.9.0-1. Alternatively, is there a way to build ahm manually? I looked at the source, but I'm not sure what files to patch, nor how to patch and/or build them, really.

(FWIW, I much prefer ahm to xcape for a number of reasons. Firstly, xcape maps enter to alt, not alt to enter. Hence, when I'm logging in with the display manager, I can't press enter with xcape. Also, I can assign ahm to specific keyboards, instead of all. Finally, since it's not userspace, I don't have to set up xcape for all users.)

Thanks again.

Salkay · 2014-06-08 06:17:33

Okay, I've worked out how to patch xf86-input-evdev myself from source. I've fixed the 2.8.0 patch to work with 2.9.0, which was strange, because it appeared that some of the patches were already accepted upstream. Anyway, I've tested it and it works well. I've uploaded it to AUR. This version is now current again, and I'll attempt to maintain it.

teika · 2014-06-15 09:16:53

Hi, I'm still alive. Thanks for updating.

I know xcape is far from best, but you can solve all your problems with xcape.
1. Run xcape before login manager, for example from /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc. 2. Per keyboard config: use xorg.conf, and specify keyboard variants. 3. To complete the item 2 and Alt <-> Enter problem in xcape, probably you should hack files in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols. (Sorry for a terse reply.)

Anyway,
1. If I were lively enough, I would rewrite xcape, but don't expect it. ;-)
2. What I said above is a messy workaround, but X is a "wontfix". I don't think it's likely that Wayland see improvements in this area.

BTW Xtest, which xcape relies, is dangerous and has to be restricted to authorized processes.

Salkay · 2014-06-15 12:07:25

teika wrote:

Hi, I'm still alive. Thanks for updating.

Good to know! No worries at all.

teika wrote:

I know xcape is far from best, but you can solve all your problems with xcape.
1. Run xcape before login manager, for example from /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc. 2. Per keyboard config: use xorg.conf, and specify keyboard variants. 3. To complete the item 2 and Alt <-> Enter problem in xcape, probably you should hack files in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols. (Sorry for a terse reply.)

In some ways, this seems hacky than ahm! Good idea with hacking the xkb symbols. That does seem like it should work, and it'll also maintain Enter in tty consoles. In the past I've hacked the keyboard firmware, which makes enter default to alt in all cases. To be honest though, ahm works excellently for me at the moment, so I don't think I'll spend time moving over to xscape.

Thank you for the reply.

P.S. actually, one small complaint that I have with both ahm and xcape is that both immediately pass the modifier key when the affected key is pressed, rather than wait until the next "modified" key is pressed. This messes up the contextual menu button in Firefox. I'll press the menu button, then attempt to press alt/enter to select an item from the menu. However, pressing this will immediately send alt, which will close the menu. A preferable option would be to not send alt until another key is pressed at the same time, and only send enter, but I imagine that this is quite difficult to program.

teika · 2014-06-21 00:49:12

Your wish-item is reasonable, and coding that part is easy. (In my opinion, what's users don't expect is a bug.) But...

the configuration part needs more work. At least, such option should be able to specify in two flavors, "global" and "per-key". Ahm is poor, relying on xorg.conf, and it's difficult. I've been imagining xml (or whatever) with good doc, and an interactive configurator has to accompany. Practical convenience wins. (I'd say eye-candies are for kids. Ncurses will probably suffice for xcape. As for configuration, most commercial apps suck.) But...

sorry, don't expect that will happen. I'm mentally dead. Furthermore, the situation discourages me; X is dead, and I don't think Wayland will be equipped with satisfactory input mechanism. (Tl;dr[1])

[1] No one knows what would be best. To imagine it, you've got to fully understand tools like xcape/ahm, AutoHotKey and so on, inputting many languages, etc. Oh, first of all, you should be aware that qwerty is a bullshit. The problem isn't that it's THE standard, but that APIs have to enable streamlined use of other layouts.

OTOH elegant API isn't most people want. At least UI needs to be coded again. Can that happen? Never.

The bottom line is: all digital gadget users are losers. :-P (I'm already too wordy, but I've cut it very short.)

teika · 2015-04-08 11:45:20

Hi. Ahm-2.9.2 is released now. It's simply a merge of upstream-2.9.2, and ahm itself hasn't changed. Please see the first post of the thread for the installation info.

There's already an unoffical AUR for ahm-2.9.2 (Thanks!), but I'd like two changes:
* url="https://gitlab.com/at-home-modifier/at-home-modifier-evdev/wikis/home"
* patch should be taken from here.

Other news
* The website has migrated to gitlab.com: https://gitlab.com/at-home-modifier/at- … wikis/home. The previous host gitorious.org will be closed in June.
* My email address has changed, too. Read README.

Regards.

Last edited by teika (2015-04-08 11:55:22)

Salkay · 2015-04-09 00:15:41

Thanks for posting, teika. I've updated the PKGBUILD, as per your instructions. I've also got around to cleaning up a few minor issues from the original package.

Out of curiosity, you mention that "ahm itself hasn't changed." I had already previously updated the patch for 2.9.2, so I could run a diff with your patch. I noticed a few other changes, such as a single line in emuWheel.c, and several lines in evdev.c and evdev.h (relating to abs_vals, rel_vals, etc.). Are these functional changes?

Cheers.

teika · 2015-04-10 00:24:52

Thanks a lot for updating PKGBUILD, Salkay.

The change you mentioned is this commit. It's an upstream bugfix, applied after 2.9.2 (i.e., it'll be a part of 2.9.3 or 2.10) I thought it'd be good to include it in ahm-2.9.2. (In fact, I mentioned it in the README, but omitted it in this forum notice )

Last edited by teika (2015-04-10 00:25:21)

Salkay · 2015-04-10 01:08:22

No worries at all, and thanks for the explanation.

Salkay · 2015-11-06 10:40:08

xorg-server was upgraded to 1.17.4 today. This resulted in a file moved to the xf86-input-evdev package, which broke USB mice for me. I upgraded the xf86-input-evdev-ahm AUR package to 2.10.0-1, and it's all working now.

The ahm patch mostly worked as is, with some of the bugfix patches now applied by upstream. teika, please let me know if you upgrade the patch and I'm happy to source it from gitlab again. (It's working fine as is, so there is certainly no rush.)

teika · 2015-11-21 11:47:39

Thanks a lot for letting me know. I've put the "official" patch at
https://gitlab.com/at-home-modifier/dow … 10.0.patch
Although mine has README.orig, I confirm that your patch is ok - for the code part, it generates the identical one to mine. It's been working for me for some 10 days.

But I won't announce the official release for a while: it has a file management problem with xorg-server <= 1.17.x (Both xorg-server <= 1.17.x and xf86-input-evdev-2.10 install 10-evdev.conf. Server 1.18 won't. [1]) so maybe most users outside of Arch don't feel like using it, although xf86-input-evdev-2.10 seems to have many, nice advances in new device support. At least it's discouraged in Gentoo:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=564358

[1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89023

It's purely a bookkeeping issue and doesn't matter the code, but tinkering manualy with this kind of thing can be a source of later headache - after all, that's why you should use package managers.

Salkay · 2015-11-22 02:15:43

Thanks. I've updated the PKGBUILD anyway, since I feel that it's better to source from the original upstream author rather than me.

teika · 2016-02-12 06:42:40

Hi. The "official" ahm-2.10.1 is released now. Please see the first post of the thread for the installation info. Ahm itself hasn't changed since Jun 2013, and there's only one change since 2.10.0. (For example Logitech G600 mouse needs it.)

For years, I've experienced the best support from the Arch community. Thanks Arch folks!

I noticed that ahm has just turned 5 years old. The initial commit of the ahm patch was on 29 Jan 2011.

Regards.

Off-topic: the current Japanese government doesn't like freedom of speech, suggesting stopping "biased" TV stations, i.e. those that the ruling party doesn't like.[1] As a Japanese, it's a shame, and I've got repeatedly sick of 'em, who've got childish mind and brain. As for governments, Japan is resembling N/S Korea, China, Turkey, or Russia. (Please distinguish residents and their governments.)

(Please don't expand this issue here. Use, say the Gentoo "off the wall" forum instead. Sorry for showing anger which is irrelevant to many of you.)

[1] tl;dr: [1] [2] [3] Maybe this blog post or else helps.

Last edited by teika (2016-02-12 06:50:06)

Salkay · 2016-02-13 01:49:36

Thank you for your kind words, and of course this fantastic software to begin with! I've updated the AUR package to use the newest ahm-2.10.1. Cheers!

Off-topic: I'm sorry to hear of the trouble in your country.

teika · 2016-07-15 11:41:04

Hi. ahm-2.10.3 is released now. Please see the first post of the thread for the installation info. Ahm itself hasn't changed since Jun 2013.

There's already AUR for 2.10.3 by Rhinoceros (Salkay in this forum). Thanks a lot.

Last edited by teika (2016-07-25 07:09:37)

Salkay · 2016-07-15 13:05:45

Thanks teika. PKGBUILD is updated to use the latest patch.

tattsan · 2017-01-13 09:05:36

Since the last update of xorg-server (to 1.19.1-1), ahm haven't been working.
I succeed in building xf86-input-evdev-ahm 2.10.4-2, but can't use dual role keys.
Any information?

Last edited by tattsan (2017-01-13 09:13:33)

Salkay · 2017-01-13 09:24:41

I'm using xorg-server 1.19.1-1 with xf86-input-evdev-ahm 2.10.4-2, and it works fine for me. Building it was a little fiddly because of dependencies on specific versions. I'm not sure if this is relevant given you've built it already. FWIW I upgraded xorg-server, which showed a conflict with xf86-input-evdev-ahm, so I uninstalled that. I then manually installed xf86-input-evdev (not sure if I had to), then (without restarting) built and installed xf86-input-evdev-ahm over that. I then restarted, and ahm still worked fine. I'm not sure if any of that is helpful to you.

tattsan · 2017-01-13 10:36:54

Thank you for your reply.
I've build xf86-input-evdev-ahm 2.10.4-2 just as you did, but it doesn't work.

Salkay · 2017-01-13 10:43:24

Hm, sorry, I'm not sure what else to suggest. I'm the AUR maintainer, but I don't really know enough about how ahm works to suggest any other fixes. Hopefully Teika will be able to help you.

Salkay · 2017-01-14 22:36:23

@tattsan, I'm not sure if this news is relevant. I'm probably clasping at straws. FWIW I have the following xf86-* installed. It's pretty minimal though, and mostly dependencies.

local/xf86-input-evdev-ahm 2.10.4-2 (xorg-drivers)
    X.org evdev input driver + at-home-modifier patch
local/xf86-input-libinput 0.23.0-1 (xorg-drivers)
    Generic input driver for the X.Org server based on libinput
local/xf86-input-mouse 1.9.2-3 (xorg-drivers)
    X.org mouse input driver
local/xf86-input-wacom 0.34.0-1
    X.Org Wacom tablet driver

tattsan · 2017-01-15 03:25:46

SOLVED

Thank you very much. The cause of the problem is that the default driver has been changed from evdev to libinput.
I added

 Driver "evdev"

to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-ahm.conf , and the ahm has been working well.

Last edited by tattsan (2017-01-15 03:26:52)

Arch Linux

#26 2012-11-20 06:52:48

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#27 2013-06-08 09:07:38

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#28 2013-06-27 12:25:04

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#29 2014-05-22 02:36:08

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#30 2014-06-08 06:17:33

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#31 2014-06-15 09:16:53

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#32 2014-06-15 12:07:25

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#33 2014-06-21 00:49:12

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#34 2015-04-08 11:45:20

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#35 2015-04-09 00:15:41

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#36 2015-04-10 00:24:52

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#37 2015-04-10 01:08:22

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#38 2015-11-06 10:40:08

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#39 2015-11-21 11:47:39

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#40 2015-11-22 02:15:43

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#41 2016-02-12 06:42:40

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#42 2016-02-13 01:49:36

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#43 2016-07-15 11:41:04

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#44 2016-07-15 13:05:45

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#45 2017-01-13 09:05:36

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#46 2017-01-13 09:24:41

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#47 2017-01-13 10:36:54

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#48 2017-01-13 10:43:24

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#49 2017-01-14 22:36:23

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

#50 2017-01-15 03:25:46

Re: Easy shift / ctrl / AltGr / etc hack on xf86-input-evdev

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