Fixing my computer
The computer section to my fixing my life post.
This is the biggest one, but also the one with a clearest end state. I have a decent keyboard (Halcyon Kyria) that I have lost my -- admittedly crap -- qmk files for. I need to remake those, as I need to move where everything is on the steno layer, and my dvorak layer is missing punctuation, and my qwerty layer was there for games mostly, but sucks for that due to the position of the WASD keys. Soooooo... everything needs to be rejigged there.
Now as for the computer itself: I have used ubuntu, arch, debian, gentoo, and nix in the past (hating gentoo, ubunto, and debian). I would like to go back to nix as I really value consistency between my machines, and imo configuration should be done in text files. Also I would, eventually, like to have a home server (years and years down the line), and would like that to also have the same conf files as my other machines, all synced up so editing on my main machine also edits the server.
Then there's the modding (the term rice is racist, and also is too much "make it look pretty" rather than how much work I need to do for this, so I'll call it modding and theming). I have not found a WM that I really liked, and so I will be coding my own on top of river. My current design for that is as follows (while still being in the design stages. no lines of code have been written) (also this is the final fully configged wm. what i will make configurable idk.)
Tags will be global (i.e. shared across monitors). Tags 1-4 will start with apps open (browser, emacs, terminal, discord respectively). Tag 1 will have either a scrolling or master layout, 4 a master layout, 2 and 3 a regular tiling layout, and the rest either regular tiling or scrolling (I lose apps so easily in scrolling tho). Also with two scratchpads one for music one as a regular scratchpad. When viewing 2 tags at once it will show the first of each tag in a regular tiling layout, then more and the layout switches to master (lower is master by default).
Uhhhh i think that describes what I want. Coding this will be fun, though I do need to check if I need to code this, or if this is doable with a simple shell script and some other river layout generator.
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Now there's the rest of the setup. I'm unsure which: terminal emulator, file manager, app launcher, wallpaper daemon, IME (for plover, the steno app), or notification centre to use. Nyxt didn't click for me, so I will want to use a firefox based browser. Vim (well, modal editing in general) is annoying with steno, and org mode fuuuuucks, so I need to learn and configure emacs. As for menus and widgets, I'd rather do all that in one place, and I want a: main menu, power menu, taskbar, and theming switching menu. Afaik the easiest way of having them all be edited in the same lang in the same place is eww.
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As for the keybinds I want (here mainly so I can reference this post while coding), currently I'm thinking having a modal steno dictionary with SKPW as a unique leader, and
open app launcher: -F open terminal: EF open browser: UF open emacs: EUF switch to tag: # + numpad toggle tag: # + numpad + E move window to tag: # + numpad + U toggle bar: -FRPB open main menu / HUD: EFRPB open power menu: UFRPB open theme switching menu: EUFRPB switch to theme number x: # + numpad + EU switch to previous theme: # screenshot: -FRPB close window: -FRPBLB lock screen: EFRPBLB turn off screen: UFRPBLB arrow based things: no vowels: focus. E: resize. U: swap positions. EU: move monitor.
Also for later down the line: overview (niri style), opacity/theming changing
With some commands allowing for repetitions via -TS, like in emily's symbols. Also maybe (probably) # should be * to remove all LHS usage aside from the leader.
Switching themes changes only aesthetic elements ofc. And I will try and make each theme hand configured rather than guessing a colourscheme from the background, because I have never felt like those samplers are great.
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Now I hate it when people spend ages and ages on this sort of crap while not having any sense of making things pretty. I will, to start with, want a setup with some pretty yuumei-art or 8pxl art as a background, then as I add the ability to switch themes next is an e-ink looking setup. however I'm a bit too early in design to think of anything beyond that.
Naturally plenty of other things need to be configured, but again I'm too early to think of that. How do i know how to configure emacs if i don't know emacs and aren't familiar with it. How do I know how to configure the terminal if i don't even know what terminal I want to use.
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Now for misc stuff. I want my emacs agenda to update automatically between all by machines, and I want to have a backup system finally (in such a way that changing the back up to a home server later down the line is easy). I want certain files to be synced to a usb drive that has a keyfile to decrypt my machines, and for that drive to be decrypted when it is plugged in, again keyfiles are more than fine (even if technically a detatched header is better, who give a shit)
God that was long lol.
