u/memilanuk

I'm interested in getting emacs to work on my tablet (Samsung A9+, if it mattters). Previously I had them installed separately, which kinda worked (ish) with the unfortunate limitation of the two environments not being able to really talk to one another, and specifically emacs not being able to access some of the tooling available on the termux side of things. So, I uninstalled both, and started over.

Based on what I had read online, it appears that I need to install termux first, then emacs - but via apk from the termux/source-forge repo - then do a little config, and then the two should be able to play nice together.

The first problem/concern was that the versions of Emacs in that termux repo don't seem to correspond to normal releases of mainstream emacs i.e. the version of v31 is at something like .0.50, vs 31.1.x, and AFAIK there isn't a main stream release of Emacs 32 yet. Kinda confusing, to say the least. I saw at least one reference to installing termux from f-droid, and another saying instead to install it via apk downloaded from that same repo. IIRC, the first way worked, and the second did not. I tried installing emacs for android (via apk) from the gnu.org repo, in their /termux directory, and when that didn't appear to work, tried installing it from the termux/source-forge repo. Which now fails saying that it conflicts with some other existing package.

At this point... what's my best path forward? How do I nuke/reset things as far as emacs and termux are concerned, and start over? Which version of termux do I need to install, and from where? Which version of emacs?

Thanks!

Any thoughts on why the one is (apparently) so much more popular than the other? Same designer, same basic layout. Is it just the switch choice (Redragon low-profile vs MX) or something else?

One of those situations where I'd like to have my cake and eat it too, as the saying goes. I've got external keyboards that can be configured at the firmware level, using Vial/QMK/ZMK, and then I have the on-board laptop keyboard on my Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Carbon. I did have home row mods set up on that, using kanata. Worked great... up until I started messing with the external programmable keyboards, and ran into some conflicts between kanata on the laptop, the firmware on the external boards, and other messing around I'd done in the settings for my desktop environment (KDE Plasma).

I ended up disabling kanata for the short term, and un-doing the settings I'd changed in KDE, until I got a little (tiny) bit of a handle on what I was doing with the external keyboards. Everything works... but I actually really liked HRMs on the latpop keyboard, and kinda want to further explore the possibilities of what kind of shenanigans I can get up to there ;)

From what I've read, it's possible to specify in the kanata config file to explicitly exclude - or include - specific devices. So in theory... I should be able to limit it to working only with the laptop keyboard.

If I run kanata --list, it gives me a list of all the connected devices, and an example defcfg block. When I have the Cheapino v2 plugged in, the sample block looks like this:

  (defcfg
    linux-dev-names-include (
      "Thomas Haukland Cheapino2 Keyboard"
      "Thomas Haukland Cheapino2 Consumer Control"
      "Thomas Haukland Cheapino2 System Control"
      "Thomas Haukland Cheapino2"
      "Raycon Bone Conduction (AVRCP)"
      "sof-soundwire Headset Jack"
      "Intel HID events"
      "ThinkPad Extra Buttons"
      "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
    )
  )

...and when I have the external keyboard unplugged, the same command outputs this:

  (defcfg
    linux-dev-names-include (
      "Raycon Bone Conduction (AVRCP)"
      "sof-soundwire Headset Jack"
      "Intel HID events"
      "ThinkPad Extra Buttons"
      "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
    )
  )

Initially I thought I'd just exclude the Cheapino, but I'm a little confused by why it has so many entries. Now it seems like it might be better to just explicitly include only the internal laptop keyboard, so I don't have to add more and more entries, for any/each external keyboard I connect to. I'm assuming the internal keyboard is the "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"... or do I need to include the "ThinkPad Extra Buttons" and "Intel HID events" as well?

Any other tips/tricks along these lines would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Hello there,

I'm currently working with a silaaka54 keyboard, and would like to have a few different 'base' layers - qwerty w/ HRM's, 'vanilla' qwerty & colemak-dh.

What's the best/recommended practice for setting up and switching between base layers like those, and then the subsequent secondary layers (nav, symbols, numbers, media, etc.)? I've been reading a bit on using layer-lock in vial / qmk, but coming up a bit short on concrete examples to work off of for my situation.

Right now I have the thumb keys all set up as LT(layer, kc) e.g. LT2(Esc), LT1(Space), LT3(Tab), LT6(Enter), LT4(Bksp), LT5(Del). Can I layer-tap into a secondary layer like nav, and then toggle/layer-lock into the other base layer?

Or would I be better served to use DF(layer) instead?

Thanks!

My day-to-day (home/hobby) machine is a laptop, running Linux w/ KDE as the desktop. I had the keyboard layout (in KDE) configured so I can pretty easily switch between QWERTY and Colemak-DH, depending on what I want/need at the time. I also set up a pretty basic kanata config for home row mods, when using the qwerty layout. I haven't looked into how exactly that mutates when using colemak-dh ;)

Now... I got an inexpensive wired ergo mech keyboards (silaaka54), and spent some time last night trying to get it set up. Re-flashed the firmware first thing, set it up for colemak-dh, added a couple macro buttons on layer 1 (because the key combos Ctrl+F1 / Ctrl+F2 to switch desktops are awkward AF while toggling a layer), and started setting up home row mods using layer tap keys.

Somewhere around this point... things started acting 'weird'. Highly specific, I know. Key combos that worked perfectly normal on my laptop keyboard - like 'Alt+Tab' to switch between application windows instead started tabbing around elements of the web page, or the Vial app. Or I'd switch to a terminal window (Alacritty or Konsole, didn't seem to matter), and either get nothing, or something bizarre going on like having '----' start shrinking the text size - almost like I was hitting Ctrl + -.

Pretty sure I was getting some mismatch between the qwerty/colemak-dh setting in KDE, and my attempts at setting up two different layout files in Vial, for the same purpose. Unplugging and replugging the keyboard seemed to 'fix' some of the issues with it going non-responsive or typing gibberish, but it wasn't 100% clear where things went off the rails.

I was poking at this way too late at night, on way too little sleep, so I'm sure the problem was likely somewhere between the keyboard and the monitor ;)

At this point, I have kanata turned off... and I'm already missing having HRM on my laptop :/

What I'd like to have is the ability to have kanata on for HRM the laptop (qwerty) keyboard, and then the vial/qmk setup for the wired keyboard completely separate, to enable colemak-dh, layers and HRM on that. Is that possible without having them interfere with one another? Is having kanata, KDE and vial all trying to do different things at the same time whats causing me grief here?

Any recommendations for a silicone caulk that doesn't end up looking all dark and dingy after a road trip? Both the Dicor that I've used when touching things up, and whatever the local RV shop used (probably Dicor) end up looking dark grey after a while, despite starting out white. Usually with some soap and scrubbing it cleans up decently, but I'd like to avoid that whole process if possible ;)

So... this is something I've been running into on different machines that I have Debian-based distros installed on: on my Proxmox machine, a laptop running Linux Mint, and a desktop running Debian Trixie. Basically... when I do os updates, apt isn't clearing out any of the old kernels, and eventually /boot fills up and the updates fail. Then I go in, figure out what's going on, clear out some of the old kernels, and re-run the updates, and all is well again for a while.

This has been an increasing annoyance, so I've been looking into it a bit more recently. What I'm reading is that sudo apt autoremove or sudo apt autopurge (or some variation thereof) should be removing all but the two most recent kernel images automatically... but that's not happening for some reason.

Looking into that a bit more, and it appears that if packages - or kernels - are marked as 'manually installed', then apt autoremove won't touch them. I've also seen references to some software updater packages marking kernel updates the same way - why, I have no idea. I know I sure as heck didn't mark any of the kernel updates in a way as to 'hold' them back. And that it seems persistent across multiple Debian-based distros... seems very odd.

As I mentioned towards the beginning... I know how to manually clear things out and make space so updates can proceed as they should. I really don't think that I should need to resize partitions to make more room in /boot, because something in the package manager settings isn't removing old kernels like it should. But I would very much like to figure out what's going on here, and why it seems to be a common plague (at least for me) across multiple distros.

Thanks!

Is there any kind of standardized bolt gun chamber out there?

I recently picked up a lightly used pre-fit barrel for my CDG... 26", 7 tw, MTU profile, yada yada. Seems like it should be fun to tinker with. But... a Berger 105 BTHP hits the lands @ 2.280" OAL. Which got me wondering if there's anything better out there, or if everyone is just running a plain SAAMI chamber, even for the bolt guns not limited by AR mag length?

So... I've been typing on qwerty for... quite a while ;) Over 4 decades. Not super fast (50-70 wpm) but not terrible. Not an office /IT worker or coder where I live-n-die by typing speed / output, just a computer hobbyist / enthusiast who dabbles with Linux (so a little light sys-admin / scripting from time to time) and emacs (starting to get going with org-mode, or at least trying). While I've used computers for quite a while, I've never had any specific discomfort directly related to the ills of qwerty. I've had some other physical injuries that ended up not playing nicely with keyboard use in general for periods of time, but I'm not sure any layout would have helped that. One of those did lead to my first encounter with a M$ 'Natural' keyboard about 30 years ago.

Recently I've been working on cleaning up / improving my typing habits. Started playing with 'conventional' (TKL) split mech keyboards and such, and have a couple cheap split ergo mech pre-built key boards on order to see what size/layout I prefer and/or can adapt to.

I was poking around on various typing websites (monkeytype, keybr, edclub.com, etc.), and started finding out that maybe part of the reason I tended to 'cheat' - ie having my ring finger do about half of what my pinky fingers 'should' be doing - is that apparently my little fingers are a bit on the short side, relatively speaking. Hence my interest in exploring ergo keyboards with possibly more 'pinky stagger', and/or something like colemak-dh, maybe dh +wide/symbols - I literally managed to give myself a little bit of RSI trying to hit all the keys with my pinkies like I'm supposed to, on a conventional qwerty laptop keyboard. All better now ;)

Work related stuff is going to stay qwerty, period. This is all just for my own entertainment/benefit at home.

I don't plan on doing a lot of heavy typing directly on the laptop, and if I do, I'm reasonably confident that having an external split keyboard with a little tenting + layers will probably address 99% of whatever physical/irritaiton/issues might arise, even with qwerty. I'm debating whether to try to add colemak-dh into that mix, at least on the ergo mech keyboard. It seems like colemak-dh + wide/symbols (caws?) would be of more benefit on the row-staggered laptop keyboard than on a col-staggered split mech board?

All this to say... does it make any sense to learn/run different colemak variants, for different keyboards? Or better to just go with colemak-dh on both the laptop and the external keyboard for the sake of continuity?

Assuming reprogramming my fingers/brain for a new keyboard layout in my 50s is even going to stick in the first place ;)

So... pretty new to the hobby, haven't made the jump to a full ergo setup yet. I'm more than a little interested in the ZSA Voyager, but I see a lot of comments about it only having two thumb keys per side.

Given that I'm coming from either a traditional laptop keyboard, or a split 75% (Mistel Barocco MD770) or Alice layout (Keychron Q8)... I'm not sure I quite understand the issue. I mean, I get the whole 'more is better' thing, but when most people here seem to be going for fewer keys...

That said... if having three (or more) thumb switches is such a big deal... any thoughts on why a seemingly great company would commit such a faux pas?

Thanks!

Another recent post about an emacs version of vim golf brought to mind a related question: has anyone tried this extended vim tutorial via evil-mode?

For that matter, is there anything equivalent or even similar for 'vanilla' emacs mode?

So... been typing a looong while. Like 40+ years. I'm reasonably proficient @ touch typing, have been for some time. Not super fast, but proficient. But...

I know I have a few bad habits - primarily under utilizing the pinkies, and instead using the ring fingers for pretty much everything the pinkies should be doing, other than the home row. Pretty sure the index finger is covering a few keys it probably shouldn't as well. I only use the left thumb for space; the right thumb basically just sits there.

Like I said, I can generally get by well enough on typing tests and such that it's hard to really focus on fixing the above. Sites like keybr, monkeytype, etc. don't really focus on technique, as long as you hit the right key at the right time, they don't care.

The only one I've ran into so far that does 'force' the issue seems to be typingclub.com... but only on a few lessons. The ones where they make you hold one key down, usually with the offending finger that you would otherwise 'cheat' with, and then hit the other keys with the correct finger (pinkie, the other index finger, etc.).

Short of running through that specific block of exercises until my eyes and fingers bleed, are there any other sites/exercises that focus on fixing 'bad habit' techniques? Preferably ones that are a little less.... middle-school-ish in their presentation?

So... I'm working on migrating taking notes for a hobby of my mine to Emacs. Previously I used Google Docs, with a fairly simple (by emacs/org standards, anyways) structure - a TOC, and individual entries for various activities on different days. Different size / weight fonts for the headings. Main heading for date + item + primary activity. Sub heading for secondary activity(s). Text blocks (paragraphs), bulleted lists, tables, etc. for detailed information. Images. I've been keeping a separate file per year, for the sake of keeping them reasonable sized.

By and large, it's more of mashup between a "dear diary" and "notes to future self" - what I was doing, what I expected to see as a result, what actually happened, what I learned... basically a way to look back and analyze what was going through my head, back when. Very little to no retroactive editing unless I find a literal typo.

Not a lot of TODOs, no time tracking, none of the finer detail stuff I see people doing with org-mode. I wouldn't mind exploring tags and such.

I know a lot of people do way, way more with their setups. I'm not entirely convinced I need custom key binds and capture templates, but... who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind?

All of this is a long-ways-round to saying... I'm trying to figure out what to start with... just a plain org file, emacs diary, denote, org-journal, org...something else?

Then there's the question of... for people that use one package/tool, then change to another... how do you manage that transition? Are you able to convert somewhat easily from one to the next, or are you stuck with a hodge-podge of fragments from different setups? Does the pain of moving from one system to another keep you with an existing setup rather than moving to another?

Got my first Keychron (Q8 Pro) yesterday and I gotta say... wow. Just... wow.

Not technically my first mechanical keyboard - I have a Logitech Mx Mech & a Mx Mech Mini that work pretty well for what they are. Tried a Mistel Barocco MD 770, used off ebay... let's just say there's a reason it was for sale - little bit glitchy :/

None of that prepared me for how solid this thing feels. So far I'm getting used to the different layout - time will tell if I end up liking this particular Alice layout or not - but so far, so good.

Never had a keyboard that could double as a melee weapon before - always wondered why people ooh'd and aah'd over custom weights on some of the more custom boards. Nof sure if it's that big of a deal for me - I've survived 53 years without it so far - but it is nice in use.

I'm brandy-new to the whole HRM thing, giving them a very basic test run on my laptop (just the GACS modifiers on the home row) . So far, so good.

One question that came up is this: when using HRM with a 'standard' QWERTY keyboard like this... what do you do with the 'old' modifier keys? Ignore them? Map them to something else? Is there one approach that is more common than others?

​

Thanks!

So... recently acquired a 750, and so far have it set up and working for .223 Rem, for 'blaster' ammo. Next up, what I really got it for, speeding up brass prep a bit.

On my 550B, pretty much anything in the same family as a .308 takes the same shell plate - #1 (13692). 6.5 CM, .260 Rem, 6.5x55, etc. I assumed that was the same thing for the 750... but that doesn't seem to be the case, according to Dillon's manual. The .308 takes shell plate #1 (13204), but the 6/6.5CM, .260 Rem & 6.5x55 calls for shell plate '6.5' (16545).

What's the difference?

I realize the way the case rim sits 'in' the shell plate on the 650/750 is different from the way it sits 'on' the sub plate on a 550... but with the exception of maybe the 6.5x55 Swede, they all have the same case head diameter, and nominally, the same rim thickness. So what gives?

Thanks!

Trying to get spacemacs up and running today, but I keep bumping into issues where it says Error (use-package): Cannot load evil-collection

...which makes spacemacs decidedly less useful!

Elsewhere in the errors buffer I see this message:

An error occurred while installing evil-collection (error: (file-error https://melpa.org/packages/evil-collection-20260605.255.tar Not found))

Haven't found much specifically on this particular problem on the wider internet, though I saw some related items that seemed to imply it was an intermittent issue with MELPA, and to just "try again later".

I'm pretty sure the time/date on my laptop is current/correct, I've tried updating the packages manually, deleting the .cache directory and letting it repopulate, deleting the entire install and starting over... always running into the same issue.

Ideas? How would one tell if it is an upstream problem, or not?