kmonad VS ryo-modal

Similar features are supported by several applications such as KMonad. Basically the only reason to prefer a firmware solution is if you often switch systems (physical computers, virtualization, remote desktop) and keeping more of your configuration in the keyboard is simpler ... and I suppose if you run into latency issues with features like tap/hold.

A lot of my input customization is better implemented [on Linux] in KMonad and then the usual XKB ... and Emacs (or other text editor).

Lower-level software like KMonad has more or less feature parity with QMK.

While usually true, much of the same effect can be achieved by using a converter (such as hasu's) that can be built for as little as $15 or so, or in software on the host computer (such as kmonad).

if somebody is reading this and not familiar with the way how to mod the laptop (or any other) keeb, check KMonad. very slightly buggy but amazingly powerful. and i think there are some alternatives. havent done the proper research though

Couple of months ago I discovered KMonad (win/mac/linux) which kind of changed my life really. That way you can have functionality similar to what QMK offers (was sort of the main inspiration for the creator of KMonad) with literally any keyboard.

started using Kmonad https://github.com/david-janssen/kmonad seems to be a modern software solution for this, and works well for me.

I don’t know much about AHK, but if it ends up not working you could look into using kmonad instead.

I wanted to make a syntax plugin for kmonad which has a lot of functions with dashes between the names of it (e.g. tap-next-release function). However, when I use syntax keyword kbdFunction tap-next-release it is interpreted as they are separated words and won't highlight any of them for some reason. Is there any way to make them all highlighted as a single keyword?

To build on what others are saying about Emacs, if you start exploring the package ecosystem, you're going to see quite a lot of really interesting packages that are related to improving/experimenting with the UX of editing text. While I'm not endorsing anyone in particular, I think what this list does show is just how easy it is to do pretty much whatever you want in Emacs;

https://karthinks.com/software/avy-can-do-anything/

https://github.com/jyp/boon

https://github.com/clemera/objed

https://github.com/jmorag/kakoune.el

https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/

https://github.com/xahlee/xah-fly-keys

https://github.com/Kungsgeten/ryo-modal

https://github.com/emacsorphanage/god-mode

Emacs 29 also now has treesitter and LSP mode integration built-in, a compilation mode, a comint mode for REPLs, excellent file browsing packages (I use dired/dirvish), and a few other killer features.

Now, if what you truly dislike are "quirky editors", prepare yourself for a world of hurt because vanilla Emacs departs quite a bit from "modern" text editors. I struggled with this for a while, but eventually by buying into the paradigm, I now feel that when emacs try emulating "modern" IDE features like autocompletion, LSP, and DAP UI, I feel like it's a regression, not a progression. The point here is that you might have an "idea" of what good initial UX and lack of quirks would look like, but Emacs might change the way you think.

If it's the latter and you're looking for a way to set up vim/evil like keybindings yourself (separate links for each), Modalka, RYO-modal, and Meow (and probably a few dozen others 'cause emacs) allow you to do that.

You can write custom commands that wrap a little bit of logic around the standard movement commands. Or another option would be to look at ryo-modal or meow.

Along with General, you can take a look at some other packages for keybindings and modal editing. A good option is RollYourOwn Modal mode. In the documentation there, it also lists several other packages with pre-defined bindings. Xah-Fly-Keys is specifically designed for ergonomics and may be interesting to explore.

Because you can roll your own modal mode. This particular approach will make the experience convenient in the way you actually prefer (Emacs' extensibility at its finest) and it'll allow you to slowly move towards the modal editing if it happens to be convenient for you.

Similar to Meow is ryo-modal. What I like about ryo-modal is that it is completely unopinionated and does nothing by default, and instead just provides the tools to make your own modal editing system.

I was thinking that combining this functionality with something like ryo-modal could make for a very satisfying and efficient modal keybind system. However, it doesn't seem like there's any ready made way to do this in Emacs.

ryo-modal is a package for creating modal keymaps. I want to test it, but I need a little help.