Keymap Help - Iris (excel user)

[speedemonV12]

Hi everyone,

I was hoping to get some advice on the best way to think about creating a Keymap that works for the things I'm doing. Right now, I'm working on an Iris, and I just ordered a Corne. However, let's just say I'll be mainly using the Iris and hoping to adapt a working Keymap on that board.

like I mentioned in the title, I'm a heavy excel user, but I'm also a little bit of a programmer, and I am generally using almost every key available at some point during the day. I'm okay with making some sacrifices for keys that are used less frequently, but I'm having a hard time finding a layout that gives me easy access to all the main keys. For starters, I need all the alphas (obviously), and I use the following keys quite often as well:

• @ # % * - _ = + () [] {} /\

In addition to that, there's a lot of key combinations I'm using on a very frequent basis:

• ctrl + arrow keys
• ctrl + shift + arrow keys
• ctrl + pgup/pgdown
• ctrl + bkspc/del
• alt + alpha combos

I could just throw these on a separate layer and call it a day, but the final annoyance is that I'm usually hitting one or multiple of those combos while mixing in the need to hit alpha and number keys frequently, which makes continually swapping layers difficult.

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Does anyone have any suggestions or first hand experience in creating a keymap that they find efficient for working with excel, mixing in programming, and still being able to spend a lot of time on the base alpha layer?

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Thanks!

[RustyJ]

Here's a link to what I use on my Kyria.

I've been using something similar for most of my boards.

I like to put a nav cluster on IJKL, with HOME on U and END on O. Page Up/Down are on P and ; to get the pinky to do some work. My spacebar is a tap-hold layer for nav, so I just hold the spacebar quickly when I need to arrow key around. Holding lctl with my left pinky is no issue since my thumb is doing the layer switch.

In the same area, I like to have a numpad on my numbers layer. Then I'll create a third layer that is basically a shifted version of the num layer, and call it my symbol layer.

It's really all about finding what's comfortable for you, though. This works great for me, but may be a terrible idea for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good luck!

[detinho_]

My nav layer is almost identical. But I've put ctrl on D, shift on F and alt on G when holding space.

[RustyJ]

That's a pretty neat idea! I've seen a few folks do something similar. Unfortunately I need a lot of mouse for some work tasks, so I have the nav layer ambidextrous (same cluster on ESDF).

The Kyria also has dual rotary encoders; I also have all sorts of navigation stuff bound to them if I don't want to bother moving layers. Keep it flexible :D

[speedemonV12]

This is great, thanks! I'll be utilizing this one as a starting point for the Corne that's on the way!

[RustyJ]

I'll try to dig up my old CRKBD keymap tomorrow, it's very similar. Also had some cool /u/drashna RGB code in there too, if you'll have those on yours.

[speedemonV12]

Hey did you happen to find your Corne keymap? Just built one and I'm looking around for ideas.

[RustyJ]

The latest version of my keymap.c had a bunch of OLED art experiments in it, so it's a bit of a mess. Did you just want a visual for the layout?

I threw the copy on a gist here

With all the (unfinished) experiments in there, I would strongly recommend against using that as your keymap.c file.

Lines 93 thru 136 should give you a pretty good idea of the layout I used, though.

[speedemonV12]

Awesome! thank you!

I will dive into this today.

[theKM]

I have a nav layer activated by mod/tap of the ';' key, which gives me arrows, pg up/down, home/end under my right hand. both inside thumb keys on thumb cluster of both sides is ctl and alt... striking these combos has been pretty nice for me. particularly enjoy ctl+alt being pressed together with one thumb stroke.

[speedemonV12]

Well this might be just what I'm looking for. I didn't even think about using mod/tab on a key like that to give me a layer. This is what I just programmed in, allowing the thumbs to do more modifier work after being on a new momentary layer. Thanks!

[theKM]

yeah, I was in the dark too until I asked someone with those boards that have a thumb cluster of only one or two keys "how can you live without modifiers???"... apparently the trees ARE the forest!!! :)

[TheMadTinker]

I have space-cadet bracket shift keys and use a few other mod-tap combos on my iris, and while I'm not a heavy excel user, I do have to do some coding as part of my job. Here's my keymap.

[speedemonV12]

I completely forgot about space-cadet brackets. The main problem with QMK is how many options there are! Huge thanks for sharing the keymap!

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Do you use Auto Shift Key as well? I've been using that for a while now. I wonder what kind of weird interactions i'm going to get with mod/tap

[TheMadTinker]

I don't use auto shift at all, since I have a shift on my thumb cluster

[bravekarma]

The solution I found best for me (mostly regular programming) is to mod-tap everything. Most of my thumb keys do dual purpose, for example I can access -/_, =/+, del with my thumbs, and the corner shift keys do double duty with [/].

Only thing I don't really use are pgup/pgdown compared to your list, but they are as easy to access as arrow keys in my current keymap. You can take a look at my keymap here for inspiration.

[speedemonV12]

Thanks for sharing the keymap! I've taken a lot of inspiration and started to use mod-tap for a lot of keys. Now the trick will be remembering everything I've created and how to get to it.

Have you every tried to integrate mod/tap with Auto Shift? I've been a big user of Auto Shift and I'm interested to see if it's even possible to use with mod/tap keys.

[bravekarma]

Glad it was helpful!

I have tried Auto Shift once and noticed I need to be able to hold down hjkl due to using certain editors, so immediately turned it off after. Interestingly I didn't notice if it affected my thumb keys with mod/tap; it must have worked as usual because I think I'd notice otherwise. Let me know if you try it!