Is it possible to use home row mods and autoshift together?

[Groz17]

Hi, thank you for this amazing piece of software I recently discovered. After trying out home row mods and discovering how you can implement autoshift by looking at #470, I wonder if it is possible to use them together.
A line like this

d (tap-hold-press-timeout $tt $ht d lctl (macro S-d))

technically works, but you have to type every character one by one and if you type fast you end up with lctl when you didn't want.

Basically my ideal workflow would look like this (taking d as an example):

• If I hold d for a certain amount of time and then release it without pressing any other character, it should result in D being typed.
• If I hold d for a certain amount of time and then I press other characters, it should result in ctrl being prefixed for those characters.
• If I tap d, it should result in d being typed.

Of course I could also use layers instead of home row mods for other letters.

I also saw you created a telescope extension, so maybe you're a Neovim user like me. Have you found some tricks or inconveniences using Kanata in Neovim?

For example I'd like to use j or k as layers or home row mods, but I got used to spam those keys and with autoshift this can't be done. Maybe tapping j and then holding it could result in j being repeated? Since it's rare to type jJ or kK I think this could be a good solution. Thanks again, kanata has already made my workflow a lot more enjoyable 😄

[gerhard-h]

The solution (for fast typing) from argenkiwi does timeout into $char (instead of Shift($char))
I think he does that because of vim. But it's maybe a good starting point for you, see
#1455

[Groz17]

That looks interesting, I'll check it out, thanks!

[jtroo]

Any reason you chose the press-timeout variant instead of release-timeout? I find that, or just plain tap-hold, work better for multipurpose alphabet keys.

[Groz17]

Basically I want a character in the home row to have 3 functions: character when tapping, its shifted version when holding and releasing, and a modifier/layer when holding and other characters are pressed. If I use release-timeout I'd need to first release the character when the modifier/layer is held, which I find more cumbersome.
Regarding the last functionality, I want some temporal space before it kicks in because when typing fast you could press a character while another is held.

[jtroo]

For vim I don't usually hold any of hjkl to navigate because it is inefficient. Some examples of what I use instead:

• / search
• telescope grep search
• ctrl-d|u to move view
• use hop/leap/easymotion style navigation

[Groz17]

I've tried using hop/leap/easymotion, but I never found a comfortable keymap to trigger their functionality, also because it conflicted with other plugins such as surround. Now that I found kanata, the number of possible keymaps I can use explodes, for example right now I'm thinking of <s-space>, which using autoshift translates to holding and releasing space after some time. I'd still like to use space as meta or maybe symbol layer, hence why I opened this discussion.