Make the escape key do nothing, and the caps lock key do escape

[quatquatt]

Currently, the closest thing we have to this is swapping caps lock and escape. But this means that whenever I get the muscle memory to click escape, it turns on caps lock suddenly. I'd prefer a custom layout that did this. Of course, it's not that simple. Useful links to reference:

https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Keyboard_Layout_Customization https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/275351 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/X_keyboard_extension https://jip.dev/posts/custom-xkb-options-with-gnome/

[quatquatt]

Check this out https://github.com/dmarcoux/dotfiles/commit/272eb7e9b97957d542cf78fe5f73b16043dbf4c4

[quatquatt]

The way I see it, we have a few options here:

• Get this working via the xkb nixos module. May need to be simultaneously setup with dconf settings so gnome doesn't get in the way.
• Do it the old-fashioned way, as documented in the wiki.
• Use something other than xkb, like kmonad as recommended here

[quatquatt]

Got something working with the xkb way in ea918e9af663545581219613036390ca8a0bb1c4. A few notes:

• Setting services.xserver.xkb.layout did NOT make gnome select the layout. The only thing that worked was:

  hm.dconf.settings."org/gnome/desktop/input-sources" =
  {
  sources = lib.singleton # Override gnome to use our custom layout, required
  (
    lib.gvariant.mkTuple ["xkb" layoutName]
  );
  };

• It's on and off whether the changes need a reboot. I'm unable to find a consistent pattern. It might be that the first time you set up a new layout, you need to reboot to enable it. I'll update if I find something conclusive.

• We're currently importing from a separate xkb file. I want to see if bringing the exact same content into the same file via pkgs.writeText will let it still work.

• Some of the names might have to be the same, for things like the filename. Will look into this.

• I still haven't gotten custom options working. The current config just rebinds a key and it seems to just work.

• We're not actually disabling escape yet. Before I work on that, i want to figure out what's actually required and what isn't, so we'll have an easier time dealing with escape stuff later on.

Good luck future me, and anyone else coming across this!