Handling Conditional Alt Behavior in Kanata: Shortcuts in Custom Layer Without Alt, Unmapped Keys with Alt

[sohanemon]

I want to achieve some shortcuts using Alt, but Alt already has several default shortcuts. For these, I haven’t assigned any specific shortcut in my custom layer.

Here’s the config I’ve tried:

inner-nav (layer-toggle inner-nav_layer)
lalt (multi lalt
  (tap-hold-release 0 $ht lalt @inner-nav)
)

And here is the inner-nav_layer:

(deflayer inner-nav_layer
          _     _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _   _
          M-tab _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _   _
          _     C-t  C-l  _    _    _    A-left C-pgdn C-pgup A-right  _    _    _
          _     _    C-w  _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _    _
          _     _    _         _         _    _    _
)

Goal:

• All the mentioned shortcuts should work without adding Alt to them.
• Any unmapped keys (_) should behave as Alt + key (i.e., Alt + q, Alt + anything not defined in the layer).

Also I've tried

inner-nav (layer-toggle inner-nav_layer)
lalt (tap-hold-release 0 $ht lalt @inner-nav)
ralt (tap-hold-release 0 $ht ralt @inner-nav)

This completely disables the Alt key for other shortcuts (e.g., Alt + q does not work).

---

How can I achieve the desired behavior where mapped shortcuts in the inner-nav_layer don’t include Alt, but unmapped keys trigger Alt + key? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

[brandonbeaumia]

Try changing your shortcuts to aliases that look something like

(defalias
    unalted-M-tab (unmod (lalt ralt) M-tab)
    unalted-C-t (unmod (lalt ralt) C-t)
    ...
)

Shouldn't need to change the already-alted shortcuts (except perhaps to remove the extra Alt?: you are already holding that down whenever you are in the layer).

https://github.com/jtroo/kanata/blob/main/docs/config.adoc#unmod