docwhat's blogAquamacs vs. Dvorak-Qwerty layout
I love Aquamacs Emacs. It totally rocks.
However, I use the Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout (AKA DQ) and Aquamacs doesn’t like the command key bindings that the DQ layout uses. DQ is dvorak except when you use the command key. Then it becomes QWERTY. This was invaluable when I first started using OS-X since it matched all the docs.
According to the FAQ Aquamacs cannot natively understand the command keys for this layout because it’s a Carbon application, not a Cocoa application.
Fortunately, there is a workaround…
According to davidswelt,
this can be worked around by dropping in a custom osxkeys.el in
~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/.
A year ago, I did this customization by hand and pretty much forgot about.
Since then, Aquamacs has gone through several iterations.
The latest, 1.6, didn’t like my preference settings. Since I keep all my
customizations (normally) in homedir I
didn’t think twice about blowing away my
~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/ directory.
Whups! This broke all my command keys!
After spending a little time with Time Machine to recover the files and figure
out what osxkeys.el was I decided to find a better solution.
And here it is; A horribly kludgy python script that essentially automates
davidswelt’s workaround: based on a keymap hardcoded in the script it patches
the osxkeys.el shipped with Aquamacs and then writes this patched version
into ~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/.
Hopefully this will be useful for someone. If not, it’ll be useful for me when I forget about this and delete my preferences again.
Ciao!
#!/usr/bin/python -utWall
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import os, sys, re, errno
class Modifier(object):
rows = None
filename = None
is_changed = False
regexp = re.compile('^(.*\(\s*define-key.*map.*\[\([^,]*,\s*osxkeys-command-key\s+)([^)]+)(\)\].*)$')
def __init__(self, filename):
self.filename = filename
fd = file(filename, 'r')
self.rows = [x.rstrip() for x in fd.readlines()]
fd.close()
def write(self, filename):
if not self.is_changed:
print "No changes to write."
return
# Backup
if os.path.exists(filename):
backname = filename + '.bak'
try:
os.unlink(backname)
except OSError, err:
if err.errno != errno.ENOENT:
raise
os.link(filename, backname)
# Write
fd = file(filename, 'w')
fd.writelines(["%s\n" % x for x in self.rows])
fd.close()
def check(self, map):
keys = set(map.keys())
values = set(map.values())
value_not_a_key = values.difference(keys)
key_not_a_value = keys.difference(values)
diff = keys.symmetric_difference(values)
if diff:
print
print "Key but not a value: %r" % key_not_a_value
print "Value but not a key: %r" % value_not_a_key
print
raise ValueError("Unbalanced keys: %r" % diff)
def fix(self, map):
alreadydone = " ; @@CHANGED "
rows = self.rows
for i in range(len(rows)):
line = rows[i]
if alreadydone in line:
continue
match = self.regexp.match(line)
if match:
start, char, end = match.groups()
char = char.strip()
newchar = map.get(char, char)
if char == newchar:
tail = "%s no change" % alreadydone
else:
tail = "%s %s -> %s" % (alreadydone, char, newchar)
rows[i] = "".join((start, newchar, end, tail))
self.is_changed = True
def escape(c):
mod = None
parts = c.split(' ',1)
if parts[0] == 'shift':
mod = parts[0]
c = parts[1]
if len(c) == 1:
if c in "?;`',<>][":
c = '\\%s' % c
if mod:
return " ".join((mod,c))
else:
return c
if __name__ == '__main__':
src = "/Applications/Aquamacs Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/site-lisp/macosx/osxkeys.el"
m = Modifier(src)
# Dvorak to QWERTY mappings
# It was easier for me to type it this way...
dvorak_to_qwerty = {
#dv qw dv qw
"[": '-', '{': '_',
']': '=', '}': '+',
"'": 'q', '"': 'shift q',
',': 'w', '< ': 'shift w',
'.': 'e', '>': 'shift e',
'p': 'r', 'shift p': 'shift r',
'y': 't', 'shift y': 'shift t',
'f': 'y', 'shift f': 'shift y',
'g': 'u', 'shift g': 'shift u',
'c': 'i', 'shift c': 'shift i',
'r': 'o', 'shift r': 'shift o',
'l': 'p', 'shift l': 'shift p',
'/': '[', '?': '{',
'=': ']', '+': '}',
'\\': '\\', '|': '|',
'a': 'a', 'shift a': 'shift a',
'o': 's', 'shift o': 'shift s',
'e': 'd', 'shift e': 'shift d',
'u': 'f', 'shift u': 'shift f',
'i': 'g', 'shift i': 'shift g',
'd': 'h', 'shift d': 'shift h',
'h': 'j', 'shift h': 'shift j',
't': 'k', 'shift t': 'shift k',
'n': 'l', 'shift n': 'shift l',
's': ';', 'shift s': ':',
'-': "'", '_': '"',
';': 'z', ':': 'shift z',
'q': 'x', 'shift q': 'shift x',
'j': 'c', 'shift j': 'shift c',
'k': 'v', 'shift k': 'shift v',
'x': 'b', 'shift x': 'shift b',
'b': 'n', 'shift b': 'shift n',
'm': 'm', 'shift m': 'shift m',
'w': ',', 'shift w': '< ',
'v': '.', 'shift v': '>',
'z': '/', 'shift z': '?',
}
dvorak_to_qwerty = dict([(escape(x),escape(y)) for x,y in dvorak_to_qwerty.items()])
m.check(dvorak_to_qwerty)
# Flip it...
qwerty_to_dvorak = dict([(y,x) for x,y in dvorak_to_qwerty.items()])
m.fix(qwerty_to_dvorak)
# Write out the changes.
dst = os.path.expanduser("~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/osxkeys.el")
if os.path.exists(dst):
os.unlink(dst)
m.write(dst)
# EOF