ErgodoxLayoutGenerator

info

date: 2017-05-20 10:29:20

tags: english Ergodox EZ

category: global

Created by: Stephan Bösebeck

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ErgodoxLayoutGenerator

I was a little bit bored of always creating the layout by "hand" and I have to admit that I never got the Massdrop Configurator to work properly. And I never managed it to get the Overview PNG up to date with all of my changes. Hence I decided to create a little tool, to help me with that.

  • it should create the keymap.c file
  • it might also read it - no need for an own filetype
  • it should have support for Macros - there are only a couple of macro types that are useful. Like type that sequence of keys or if pressed, press these keys, if typed, type this sequence
  • it should create a GUI that could be used as documentation for it

So... The first milestone is finished, I created a little java application that can read my keymap.c and is able to show the layout graphically. Yes I know, it does not look that good, but it is ok...

Here is the first Screenshot of this simple tool, showing my current osx_de layout:

Things still to be done:

  • proper C-file export
  • macro support
  • sorting of layers
  • KeyMapping
  • UI improvements...

so for now, this tool actually helps with documenting of keymaps. It reads in a keymap.c file and shows it in a more graphical way. This is an example:

The tool is available on Github: https://github.com/sboesebeck/ErgodoxLayoutGenerator

Disclaimer: This is in prototype phase. Not really more than a proof of concept. So use it at own risk. Same for the code - it works, but there are some ugly parts in it...

Here is the documentation PNG of all layers put together. Creation of this took 5 mins.

update

Although some people thought this would be an April's fool prank - it isn't. This tool really exists and really works! It is now capable of creating overview PNGs with a click of a button. This is the overview PNG for my own layout osx_de:

But it works with all other layouts so far as well. Like the default one:

This is an example, where the parsing worked fine, but the file lacks some information. The layers do not have descriptive names. And there you also see that there are a lot of macros being called. Here most of them are just unicode output of special letters, but the ELG does not show them properly:

Things still to be done:

  • create a release, executable jar file, so that everybody can just test it.
  • fix didplay of keys - EXCLM should be a !.
  • fix parsing of macros. especially the dealing with unicode keys
  • if the display is correct, deal further with the input of keycodes
  • store as proper keymap.c

First BETA Release available Go have a look here here. This is a BETA Release, not all functionality is implemented yet. But you can create your documentation overview PNG file...

should run on all machines having java installed (current JDK8!)