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https://github.com/candera/khordr

A keyboard chording application: supercharge your typing by pressing more than one key at once.
https://github.com/candera/khordr

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A keyboard chording application: supercharge your typing by pressing more than one key at once.

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# khordr



A pluggable framework for intercepting the key events that occur at a

hardware level and doing "things" in response. "Things" can include

running programs, altering the keystrokes to other keystrokes or

combinations of keystrokes, or anything you can write code to do.

There will be built-in support for doing things like moving the mouse

from the keys on your keyboard.



The name "khordr" comes from the fact that the primary use case that

motivated me to write this is to use key "chords" to accomplish

things. A chord, like on a piano keyboard, is when more than one key

is pressed simultaneously.



# Genesis



I've always been interested in typing. As a computer programmer, it's

the primary mechanism I use to do my job. I've been very lucky not to

experience any problems with

[RSI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury), but I

nonetheless was intrigued by the unusual

[Kinesis keyboard](http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/contoured.htm), which

some of my collegues at [Relevance](http://thinkrelevance.com) use.



I spent an entire month using the Kinesis. At the end of it, I decided

that it wasn't for me, since I found it somewhat less comfortable and

definitely slower than my crappy $12 keyboard. There was one thing I

*really* liked about it, though, and that was the placement of the

modifier keys: shift, control, and alt. As an

[emacs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs) user, I frequently type

all sorts of weird combinations of keys, and on the Kinesis these are

generally much easier to do due to the fact that you can use your

thumbs for something other than hitting the spacebar. As a result,

typing things like control-alt-x are two thumbs and a finger.



Of course, I wanted the best of both worlds. I wanted my regular,

non-weird keyboard, but I wanted to be able to type weird combinations

of keys comfortably. If I could somehow physically move the shift,

control, and alt keys to the middle of the keyboard, I'd be there.



What I realized is that this is, in fact, possible. One can use, for

example, j for shift, k for control, and l for alt. The tricky part is

in disambiguating situations where the user wants to simply type these

keys from situations where the user wants to use them to modify other

keys. There are several complications in doing this that I won't bore

you with, but after months of working on it, I finally figured it out.



The cool thing is that along the way I wrote something far more

general than something that only lets you use extra modifier keys.

What I have in khordr is a generalized framework for reacting to key

events at a very low level. This can be used to achieve all sorts of

neat effects, like operating the mouse using your keyboard. That

remains to be implemented, but the supporting code is there and should

make the task relatively straightfoward.



# Installation



khordr currently works only under Windows. I have plans to make it

work for Mac OS X and ideally Linux.



You'll need to install the

[Interception](https://github.com/oblitum/Interception) device driver

and reboot before using this application. NOTE! Having Interception on

your system is technically a security risk, as it allows programs to

intercept everything you type, including passwords. Note that this is

a problem with installing any device driver, not just Interception.



The project is written in [Clojure](http://clojure.org) using

[Leinginen](https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen). Because the

project also contains raw Java compiled by lein's `javac` task, you

will need to correctly configure your setup for this. I'm not 100%

sure what the magic here is, but I've gotten it to work by putting the

following in my `~/.bashrc` under Cygwin:



```bash

export LEIN_JAVA_CMD=~/bin/jdk/bin/java

```



where `~/bin/jdk` is a symlink to

`/cygdrive/c/Program Files (x86)/Java/jdk1.7.0_07/`.

Yes, this is sort of awful. Sorry for that



# Required Hardware



khordr should work with any keyboard, with one caveat: if you make use

of a handler that relies on more than two keys being down

simultaneously, you will probably need a decent keyboard. The feature

you're looking for is called N-Key Rollover, or NKRO. It is common in

gaming keyboards. Less capable keyboards often refuse to report

additional keys once more than two are down, although they are fairly

irregular about it. You may find, for example, that your keyboard is

happy to report n, p, and j down, but won't report n, p, and q.



# Appreciations



Huge thanks to [Francisco Silva](http://oblita.com) for writing

Interception, without which I'd still be crashing my computer trying

to write the device driver part of this myself.