Switch state through a chosen keysequence (jj, jk or fd)

[YassinRian]

Started using Boon and I really like the setup. But ofcourse the issue with a modal system is the switching between the states. Personally I dont like switching through Ctrl, Meta or Esc ...it just doesnt feel natural ..especially when you will be switching continously. I started using Devil-mode (I know strange name..well its what it is) by which I could map the " ; " key to Ctrl globally .. so I bound C-j in the insert-map to call the "boon-command-set-state" and thus I could switch easily to the command-state by pressing " ; - j " from the insert mode. This was an adjustment that made switching much better and easy on the finger as " ; " and j are used to move left and right. But recently I found another way which from my perspective is even better ... and this is by using a hydra. When I was using Evil mode ...you have the possiblity to use Evil-escape ..and in there I could use jj, jk or even fd as my switch sequence and I wanted to have something like that (without using keychord.el ..somehow this package slows down emacs). So with a hydra you can do it ...which is beautiful I think:) ... Hereby an example for "fd" ...if clicked on f from the INS state the hydra is activated, the user will have 1 sec to either switch to CMD or the char "f" will be printed (of course you could change the time to whatever you like)

from abo-abo https://github.com/abo-abo/hydra/issues/34 ` ;; a timer function that runs whenever the hydra is selected or an option is selected (defun hydra-generic-timeout (timer secs fun) (when (and (boundp timer) (timerp (symbol-value timer))) (cancel-timer (symbol-value timer))) (setq timer (set timer (timer-create))) (timer-set-time timer (timer-relative-time (current-time) secs)) (timer-set-function timer fun) (timer-activate timer))

;; needed as a global var to keep track of wether an option has been selected (setq state-validator nil)

      (defun hydra-timed-switch ()
        (hydra-generic-timeout
         'hydra-cv-timer
         1.0
         (lambda ()
           (unless state-validator (insert "f"))
           (setq state-validator nil)
           (setq hydra-deactivate t)
           (hydra-keyboard-quit))))

      (defhydra hydra-state (:pre hydra-timed-switch
                                             :color blue
                                             :hin:t nil)
        ("d" (progn (setq state-validator t) (boon-set-comand-state))))

(bind-key "d" #'hydra-state/body boon-insert-map)

`

[YassinRian]

an update on the above:

it seems that hydra already takes care of the modal switching ...which is great. This is a better solution:

I am using "fd" as my switch from boon-insert-mode to command-mode:

step 1: create a hydra with you preferred key:

(defhydra hydra-change-mode (:color blue :body-pre (insert "f") :idle 1.0) ("d" (progn (delete-char -1) (boon-set-command-state))) )

step 2: create a binding in the boon-insert-map:

(bind-key "f" #'hydra-change-mode/body boon-insert-map)