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diff --git a/keyboards/ymdk/melody96/keymaps/zunger/readme.md b/keyboards/ymdk/melody96/keymaps/zunger/readme.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..3eb64a2e73 --- /dev/null +++ b/keyboards/ymdk/melody96/keymaps/zunger/readme.md @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +* The "Cadet-Style" keymap for the melody96. +* Author: Yonatan Zunger (zunger@gmail.com) + +This is an experimental keymap being used both for practical reasons (as my daily driver) and to +work out the ideas of a "space-cadet-style" keyboard which can type text and mathematical symbols +with equal ease. It's designed for anyone who frequently needs to do this outside of a LaTeX +environment, or for anyone who loves the old "Space Cadet" keyboard! And it works at its best when +you have actual Cadet keycaps (like SA Symbolics) installed, because those keycaps will actually +show what you get. + +The core idea of this keyboard is that, in addition to a QWERTY base layer and a function layer, it +supports two additional base layers -- the GREEK layer (the analogue of the Space Cadet "Greek," or +"Front," keys) and the CADET layer (the analogue of the Space Cadet "Top" keys). These layers use +Unicode to generate all of the mathematical symbols you can find on a traditional Space Cadet +layout, plus a bunch of extras. + +Because Unicode can't be encoded using the traditional USB HID protocol, QMK does some clever but +horrifying things to fool your OS. One consequence of this is that the shift key needs to be handled +by the keyboard firmware, not the host OS. To handle this, we have two additional layers -- +SHIFTGREEK and SHIFTCADET -- and handle the flipping between all of these layers here in the +firmware. + +*The simple bit: Using this layout on a Melody96* + +At the core of this layout are three special modifier keys and two special lock keys: + +* The GREEK key, to the right of the spacebar, activates the GREEK layer. GREEK+SHIFT activates + SHIFTGREEK. These keys generate Greek letters on the letter keys (thus the name), and a few + mathematical symbols on other keys. They correspond to the notations on the front of traditional + Space Cadet keys; if your capset doesn't include those (alas, most don't), they're the "pretty + obvious" mappings. +* The CADET key, to the right of GREEK, activates the CADET layer. These are the symbols above the + letters on a Space Cadet layout. CADET+SHIFT activates the SHIFTCADET layer, with even more + symbols. +* The FUNCTION key, to the right of CADET, activates the function layer. This is where you have a + reset mechanism, a selector for which Unicode input type you want, and so on. + +Additionally, GREEK+ALT is equivalent to CADET. This is handy for other keyboards where you don't +have room for this many modifiers. + +The lock keys are: + +* Caps lock, if you use it, will also act as a "shift lock" for the Greek and Cadet layers. Shift + lock is slightly different, in that while it is engaged shift will _dis_engage it; that's actually + pretty useful when typing math. +* An additional "layer lock" key, by default where "num lock" usually goes, will lock the choice of + base layer. To use it, hold down any invocation of the GREEK or CADET layers, or none at all, and + hit lock; it will then put you in that layer. The corresponding modifier key will then toggle you + back to the QWERTY layer. (So for example, if you hit GREEK+LAYER_LOCK and release them, you're + now typing in Greek; the GREEK modifier would cause you to type QWERTY momentarily. To go back to + ordinary QWERTY mode, you'd just hit LAYER_LOCK again with no modifiers held) + +To see the full layout, check out the big comment in keymap.c. + +*A less-simple bit: Adapting this to other keyboards* + +This is really a canary for generic Cadet implementations. Before this can be made generic, a few +things will have to happen: + +(1) Instead of a fixed keymap, this has to be refactored into some kind of array showing the +mappings of QWERTY-layer keys onto the appropriate code points in the GREEK and CADET layers, and +some preprocessor magic needs to auto-transform this plus a traditional keymap for the QWERTY layer +into keymaps for all five of the core layers. (Function layers would presumably be handled on a +per-keyboard basis) + +(2) The standard mapping of those should have some #define's to control things like whether there +are physical F-keys (you would probably want to move superscript and subscripts onto the numbers if +there weren't, and figure out what to do with the non-numeric super/sub keys), whether you actually +want to enable GREEK+ALT=CADET, and so on; + +(3) There should be support for controlling indicator LEDs based on the base layer selection, +caps/shift lock state, and layer lock state, as well as for triggering audio on transitions; + +(4) All the core fancy logic in process_record_user which implements the layer handling should be +factored out into its own function, so that keyboards can easily reuse that, too. + +This is a lovely TODO for future work, and could be particularly fun to go along with new releases +of SA Symbolics and the like. Anyone interested in such things, ping me! |