is there a way that makes emacs recognize key hold
reddit / emacs

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ntrysii · 2022-08-29 21:56

Hi guys, hope you all doing fine. I was wondering about a way that
makes emacs recognize a key hold,

so can i for example create a program that for example when the space
bar is pressed and hold then i press another key with it, it would
send some Unicode character that i dont use or such a program is
impossible.

I'm sorry i have no idea about the topic so excuse my ignorance

i use ubuntu 20.04 by the way.

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aptmnt_ · 2022-08-29 22:52

Would be nice, could implement hold ctrl and press tab for cycling
through buffers.

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arthurno1 · 2022-08-29 23:15

> Would be nice, could implement hold ctrl and press tab for cycling
through buffers.

(define-key global-map [C-tab] #'next-buffer)

But it's a bad idea. Minor modes might redefine the tab (for example
Yasnippet) and they will have precedence over global tab so it won't
work that well.

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aptmnt_ · 2022-08-29 23:16

Can't hold down and repeat press to cycle (like in intellij idea) and
release to select.

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arthurno1 · 2022-08-29 23:25

> Can't hold down and repeat press to cycle

Have you tried? You can keep Ctrl pressed with pinky and press as many
different keys as you prefer. When I press C-x C-f I don't move my
pinky off the Ctrl key. Same with C-tab. Press Ctrl and keep it
pressed, while you press tab repeatedly. But I wouldn't use it, as
said, it will clash with some minor modes and might be confusing.

> (like in intellij idea) and release to select

I have never used intellij so I have no idea what you are talking
about there.

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ieure · 2022-08-30 00:14

No.  Emacs only recognizes key chords if they use one of the built-in
modifiers -- shift, control, meta, alt, super, or hyper.  You can't
chord two arbitrary keys.  You could use lower-level X11 key mapping
to change a key to one of the less-used modifiers, and bind ex. Alt-
Space to do what you want.

You could also get a mechanical keyboard which runs QMK, which opens
up a lot of possibilities for macros and chording.

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thetemp_ · 2022-08-30 02:46

You want https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad.

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agg_sig_me · 2022-08-30 06:52

Makes me think of this: https://xkcd.com/1172/

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arredi · 2022-08-31 00:11

You could either use the mouse because it recognizes a press as
opposed to a click, or use timers to detect if another key in a window
has been pressed this used to detect key cords, an example might be
which key.