Toggle additional layer when some layer activates

[lobre]

I have a navigation layer on space. There, I have navigation mappings for my window manager. But I would also like to have two variations that will change the behaviour of the d and f keys when the tab key is hit. And be able to go back and forth between the variations still by using tab.

Except for this subtle change of d/f, all the rest of the mappings are the same and I have plenty of them. I could define two variation layers nav_variation_one and nav_variation_two and swap between them when tab is hit. However, this would make me duplicate all the rest of the mappings except d/f for both layers. Here is an example:

[main]
space = overloadt(nav_variation_one, space, 150)

[nav_variation_one]
tab = swap(nav_variation_two)

# the only part that changes for this variation
d = S-tab
f = tab

# plenty of common mappings
q = M-1
w = M-2
e = M-3
...

[nav_variation_two]
tab = swap(nav_variation_one)

# the only part that changes for this variation
d = M-S-tab
f = M-tab

# plenty of common mappings
q = M-1
w = M-2
e = M-3
...

And here I am only talking about two variations but if I want more, I have a lot of duplication happening.

This is not convenient and this is one of the reasons why I hit the descriptor limit as raised in: #876.

So I was wondering if I could use layering with a common layer below and two variation layers on top of it. This way, variation layers would only define d/f mappings and the rest would traverse to the underlying common layer.

But for that, I would need to be able to directly toggle the first variation as soon as the common layer is activated. Let me give an example of how I imagine that:

[main]
space = overloadt(nav_common, space, 150)

[nav_common]
# at activation find a way to:
# toggle(nav_variation_one)

# plenty of common mappings
q = M-1
w = M-2
e = M-3
...

[nav_variation_one]
tab = swap(nav_variation_two)

d = S-tab
f = tab

[nav_variation_two]
tab = swap(nav_variation_one)

d = M-S-tab
f = M-tab

I read the manpage extensively but I don’t find an easy way to do this. If overload would take a macro after enabling the layer, I could do toggle(nav_variation_one) but that is not the case.

Is there a way to achieve this that I would have missed? Thanks.

[rvaiya]

At the moment the best way to achieve this is to put common bindings in another file and then include them. You cannot simultaneously toggle two layers, though I am playing with some ideas that may accommodate this in the next version.

Personally, I would do something like this:

/etc/keyd/common-nav:

q = M-1
w = M-2
e = M-3

/etc/keyd/main.conf:

...
[nav_variation_one]
d = S-tab

include common-nav

[nav_variation_two]
d = M-S-tab

include common-nav

The advantage of this approach is that you can easily recycle nav bindings between files which correspond to different devices. I frequently do this with my ergonomic boards and find it quite useful.