Feature request: native support for layer-while-held events in Kanata

[rpnfan]

Currently Overkeys cannot display when a layer is realized with a held-key. That means it will not show my navigation layer, nor my symbol layer, which are realized in that way.

Working: OverKeys correctly shows the base layer (ende) and highlights keys as you type.

Not working, and not fixable from the Kanata side: OverKeys layer switching for layer-while-held and one-shot layers.

This is a hard limitation of how OverKeys communicates with Kanata. The TCP protocol only emits a LayerChange event for permanent layer-switch actions. Transient overlays, which is what both your navigation and symlayer are, are invisible to it. The push-msg workaround doesn't work because OverKeys filters for native Kanata events, not injected ones.

We would need native support for layer-while-held events. The Kanata TCP server does broadcast these internally, OverKeys just doesn't subscribe to them. Could you make that change?

Here for reference my Kanata config file: https://github.com/rpnfan/Anymak/releases

[conventoangelo]

Hi @rpnfan, big fan of your work in the keyboard community btw.

Pertaining to your issue, I just need to clarify some things. For all the demos that have been posted in the docs and in answers to some issues, I have been using layer-while-held for all my layer changes. And as you can see, it works as it should. Both layer-switch and layer-while-held both send a LayerChange. I also tried to implement this with your one shot symbol layer and it also works as it should, switching to the symbol layer. However, the caveat is it does not show the keypress of the symbol as it instantly switches back after pressing a key (which means the one-shot works correctly).

Here is my kanata.kbd