[HN Gopher] Using foot pedals for modifier keys in Linux (2014)
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Using foot pedals for modifier keys in Linux (2014)
Author : luu
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-04-01 17:34 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techtrickery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techtrickery.com)
| nicodjimenez wrote:
| I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but this is just
| ridiculous. Typing isn't piano or weaving, folks. Lots of keys on
| a keyboard! You never need to press 10 keyboard keys at once =>
| you don't need a pedal. VIM also has more tricks than one person
| could ever learn.
| honkycat wrote:
| My buddy works at Intel and in his onboarding they asked: where
| do the most workplace injuries happen?
|
| The office. Carpel tunnel is a PLAGUE for older engineers. We
| all have a ticking clock.
|
| So for me a pedal is about saving my hands from stretching and
| mmoving and delegating that to a larger, stronger
| muscle/skeleton group.
| LosWochosWeek wrote:
| I know this sounds ridiculous, but my left pinky is a hot
| head that doesnt want to play nice with the rest of it's
| siblings. Its crazy how often I try to convince myself that
| one day I'll buy a foot pedal and use it as a shift key.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| You don't need 10 keys! You just need 1s and 0s!
|
| >You never need to press 10 keyboard keys at once
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard
|
| Do you just hate everyone without 10 fingers? There's more than
| one reason to alter your keyboard setup.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > Do you just hate everyone without 10 fingers? There's more
| than one reason to alter your keyboard setup. No, they do not
| hate people with less than 10 fingers. As you typed that out,
| and before you pressed send, this should have been obvious to
| you. This sort of comment flagrantly breaks the HN
| guidelines, which is very disappointing because it could have
| easily been reasonable. Find a more mature way to disagree.
| cinntaile wrote:
| People with ache or other issues can definitely benefit from
| not having to use all keys on a keyboard.
| egypturnash wrote:
| When you're deep in a program, it's not uncommon to have a
| _ton_ of keyboard shortcuts. More than just command-x can
| cover. More than adding in command-shift-x will cover. Maybe
| even more than three-modifier commands will cover. And hitting,
| say, command-alt-shift-d is a heck of a finger twister.
|
| So you start looking for more keys. I use Karabiner to turn
| capslock into command-alt-shift and fn-anything-but-a-function-
| key into command-shift. Or you make a keyboard with more keys -
| look up the "Space Cadet Keyboard" for a classic example. Or
| you get a couple of foot pedals.
|
| (Foot pedals have other uses, too - transcriptionists have
| pedals designed to act as transport controls for the playback
| of the audio they're typing, so they never have to take their
| hands off the keyboard. I'm told they help speed things up a
| _lot_.)
|
| You also don't necessarily have all those keyboard shortcuts
| memorized. But if you operate on a principle of "anything I
| need to do twice in ten minutes probably needs a shortcut so I
| can do it a ton faster next time I gotta do it a lot" it's easy
| to accumulate them, in _any_ tool.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| My trackball, a Clearly Superior Technologies L-Trac (I know best
| name ever), has 3.5mm ports that you can hook external switches
| in.
|
| For a while I tried putting these switches below where my palms
| are when I use my ErgoDox keyboard. One was set to the command
| modifier on Mac and I don't remember what I set the right
| modifier to. I guess that is because I rarely used them (given
| that the ErgoDox places at least 4 keys under my thumbs).
| Biganon wrote:
| "Foot pedals", what a lovely pleonasm
| rendaw wrote:
| I've tried using foot pedals like this before but there were two
| issues which made it not work.
|
| 1. You need to keep the ball of your foot raised when not
| pressing the button, which leads to an ache super quick. And foot
| switches tend to be pretty tall. The actuation distance is also
| pretty large.
|
| 2. The fact your foot is raised messes up your sitting balance.
| And you need to keep your foot in the same place all the time: no
| spinning your chair, no leaning to the side, shifting your
| weight, etc.
|
| I'd like to see a good foot input device. Maybe something
| attached to the foot?
| swader999 wrote:
| Same here, trying to coordinate foot and finger combinations is
| a little awkward to say the least.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Learn vim and map the pedal to the Esc key.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I also used a foot pedal for a normal toggle and neither as
| toggle nor as clutch did the trick for me. I wouldn't use it
| again unless it was attached to my shoe in some way.
| somedudetbh wrote:
| I actually do use vim (well, evil mode in Emacs), and I did
| set up a footswitch and did map it to esc. It was really
| annoying, for all the reasons OP mentioned. I guess I also
| didn't realize how much I vary my sitting/standing posture
| during the day but keeping my foot over that footswitch
| really didn't work for me. It also felt slower but I'm not
| sure if I would have gotten used to it, I don't think I even
| made it a day before i realized this wouldn't work for me.
|
| This was during a strange time when I experimented with
| like....i wrote some code to recognize chords on a midi
| controller and map them to key sequences, so like
| C-major->switch to home desktop. that was kind of funny. The
| only thing that was even vaguely useful from all these
| footswitch etc experiments was using grid of drum pads as
| window management tools. e.g. shortcut to four virtual
| desktops = top row of four drum pads. But even that I don't
| actually use.
|
| anyway, ymmv
| ChickeNES wrote:
| > I'd like to see a good foot input device. Maybe something
| attached to the foot?
|
| Perhaps an accelerometer in your shoe?
| a_t48 wrote:
| Could you invert it and only apply the modifier when your foot
| is raised?
| soheil wrote:
| You can use piano foot pedals too.
| [deleted]
| georgewsinger wrote:
| I've gotten a lot of use out of using a sim-racing shifter
| (specifically Thrustmaster THA8) as an input device in Linux:
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/DksPS2ijo9aPCUi5A
|
| These shifters are normally designed for use in sim-
| racing/gaming, but I haven't sim raced a single time in my life.
| The shifts can be reconfigured for various actions, and I use it
| for things like switching workspaces or various emacs bindings.
|
| It's _extremely_ mechanically satisfying to use.
| notRobot wrote:
| Whoa. I guess I now know what to save up for for my birthday.
| ghotli wrote:
| Between this and the Simula One, I basically desire to emulate
| your entire setup. Nicely done
| unemphysbro wrote:
| oh damn...you also need a big red button to kick things into
| turbo/overdrive for the serious hacking
| leobg wrote:
| That makes me laugh. To imagine how you're sitting there at
| your PC switching gears. My grandma would be totally confused,
| haha.
|
| But I like the idea. Would also be interested to know how
| you're using it!
| panda88888 wrote:
| This looks really interesting. Could you provide more details
| on your setup?
| georgewsinger wrote:
| I use qjoypad (https://github.com/panzi/qjoypad) to configure
| each shift to a single number press. So for example shifting
| into 2nd gear sends a single "2" key press to Linux.
|
| After that, I usual xbindkeys & emacs to configure more
| complex bindings. So for example "WindowsKey + n" is
| configured to go into workspace n. Or "CapsLock + 8" is
| binded to close the current tab I'm on.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Oh god now I kinda want this. I am saved by the fact that I
| can't think of a way to use this that fits into what I do but I
| want this.
| mortenlarsen wrote:
| I use a small two-way KVM-switch for my main setup in the living
| room (GF demanded that my main setup was in the living room so
| that I wouldn't spend too much time in my lab). The KVM-switch
| has an external button on a wire to switch between two computers
| . It fell behind the desk a few years ago, and now I just use my
| foot to switch between computers. It works well.
| epr wrote:
| Although I'm a vim user, I took inspiration from the many emacs
| users who swap left control and caps lock. For me, it's worth
| having for ctrl-l alone. After getting used to it, I can never go
| back. setxkbmap -option ctrl:swapcaps
| harryvederci wrote:
| I did this for a while, but I was getting RSI-ish symptoms in
| my left pinkie after a while.
|
| If you ever get that as well: What works for me is swapping the
| left Alt and left Ctrl keys (without other keyboard changes). I
| happened to never use alt for anything combined with a right
| hand key, and now I can access the left Ctrl with my thumb.
|
| Hacker man!
|
| Edit: left Cmd and left Ctrl on mac.
| epr wrote:
| Oh, believe me, I would if I wasn't already using alt as my
| modifier key for navigating my window manager
| adaszko wrote:
| There was a point when this was joke poking fun at emacs users.
| With time, it makes more and more sense. Foot pedals offload some
| strain from your hands to your feet which in theory sounds
| healthier when it comes to joints. They may even improve blood
| circulation to your feet. Something which is quite desirable
| given the sedentary nature of computer work.
| tharne wrote:
| Right on. I've noticed in general, there's a lot of derision
| towards anyone using non-standard/ergonomic equipment.
|
| I use a split (Dactyl Manuform) keyboard with qmk, and there's
| no end to the ongoing jokes about my "nerd keyboard", even from
| fellow programmers.
|
| I can live with the jokes though. The keyboard cured my RSI and
| saved my career.
| flylikeabanana wrote:
| I have recently moved the ctrl key away from the "caps lock"
| position on my Ergodox and onto the thumb cluster, it's
| already improving the strain in my pinky. I took the initial
| move since the corner position is about the worst kind of
| stretch for a lot of key combinations, but with the amount
| that I use the ctrl key there's no doubt in my mind I should
| be using my strongest digit.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| Yeah, if you have thumb clusters I definitely recommend
| putting modifiers on them. The thumb is one of the
| strongest digits, yet most only use them (or one of them!)
| to press a single key, the spacebar. What a waste.
|
| On my ergodox the two big thumb keys on the left are
| control (escape when tapped) and alt. I don't use the other
| thumb keys as they aren't comfortable to type. The two
| right thumb keys are space and enter.
|
| My thumbs have thanked me for the past nine years.
|
| https://hairysun.com/revisiting-the-ergodox.html
| a9h74j wrote:
| Possible satire, but conceivably practical: Emacs user links
| modifier foot pedals to generator, powers own computer.
| qrian wrote:
| Response time was ultimately why I discarded foot pedal after
| going trouble of setting it up. Brain to foot response time was
| too long for me and it significantly degraded productivity,
| especially since modifier keys are meant to be pushed in sync
| with other keys.
|
| Foot pedal works for music because in music you plan to push the
| pedal ahead of time, whereas in programming it is a snap decision
| and therefore requires low latency reaction time.
|
| Not sure if it was a matter of training.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Not sure if it was a matter of training._
|
| Probably not. IIRC, nerve signals are actually much slower than
| we like to imagine, but our brains plays tricks with our memory
| such that we don't percieve it.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I used to think this was a good idea, then I found out about the
| "motor homonculus":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus I see it as the
| 2nd image down in the right hand column.
|
| Your feet are just never ever going to be as coordinated as your
| hands. I guess an on-off pushbutton would be ok, but a "mole"
| (mouse moved by foot) will never have the accuracy of a hand-
| manipulated mouse.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Well that's a neurotypical illustration corresponding to a
| typically developed brain with typical usage patterns. People
| who can't use their hands or train a lot with their feet can
| display astounding dexterity.
| leobg wrote:
| Very true. Just think of Bach. The man was a master at the
| organ, with his hands as well as with his feet.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I mean, maybe not _as_ coordinated the hands, but try telling
| an organist[1][2] that feet can 't be coordinated.
|
| Models are just that, models. They often don't actually reflect
| reality.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedal_keyboard
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4XeClV_NCQ
| tharne wrote:
| Watching a skilled organist do their thing is mind blowing.
| samatman wrote:
| This has little to no bearing on learning to use pedals, which
| are designed specifically for feet.
|
| Ask any rock guitarist or concert pianist how they feel about
| stomping pedals while doing fiendishly complex things with
| their hands.
| soheil wrote:
| So why is it that race car drivers never use their fingers to
| push an acceleration or brake button?
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Presumably because they've got their hands full. But I agree
| that you can apply some varying degrees of finesse with your
| foot on the accelerator pedal of a car, pretty clearly (good
| thing, too).
| gotaquestion wrote:
| I'd just be happy of trackpad support was consistent and
| reliable.
| medstrom wrote:
| Aside from foot switches, you could mount "knee switches" which
| are just more foot switches glued to the underside of your desk.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Foot pedals. I'm using one with three axis for flight simulation.
| One day I ran linux on the computer they were connected to, not
| "using" them, just connected.
|
| Suddenly, without any warning, my screen turned left/right/upside
| down like it would on a tablet.
|
| After the initial surprise it took a bit of time to figure out
| that it was caused by stepping on the pedals. And even more time
| to figure out that anything unkonwn with three axis is considered
| an accelerometer, and that an accelerometer defaults to turn the
| screen in gnome.
|
| It was a long time ago. I haven't checked recently if there's
| finally a hwdb or whatever is needed for systemd to do some
| meaningful mapping.
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