#+title: sxhkd-ish
#+title_extra: {{{center(another place the shell lives forever)}}}
#+filetags: :shell:wayland:
#+pubdate: <2021-01-26>
#+post_type: post

For years now, I've used bspwm as my daily driver window manager. It does not ship with a builtin way to set keybindings -- instead, the recommended path is to use another program by it's author, [[https://github.com/baskerville/sxhkd/][sxhkd]], to bind key presses to process calls. Such calls are launched with ~SHELL -c COMMAND~, where ~SHELL~ is set by ~$SXHKD_SHELL~  or ~$SHELL~. Here's a pair of bindings from my [[https://github.com/neeasade/dotfiles/blob/a6bbfdad1fc8982bcedbb6e9449823b935d4a166/sxhkd/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc#L1][sxhkdrc]]:

#+begin_src conf
super + Escape
    notify-send "reloading sxhkd!"; pkill -USR1 -x sxhkd

super + {_,shift,alt,ctrl} + {h,n,e,l}
    {focus,move,resize,presel}.sh {west,south,north,east}
#+end_src

One of sxhkd's most attractive features for me is the slick templating you can have. That second example assigns my preferred directional keys ([[./colemak-dh-mod.org][colemak-dhk]]) to call scripts assigned to do different actions. The full expansion is as follows:

#+begin_src conf
super + h
    focus.sh west
super + n
    focus.sh south
super + e
    focus.sh north
super + l
    focus.sh east
super + shift + h
    move.sh west
super + shift + n
    move.sh south
super + shift + e
    move.sh north
super + shift + l
    move.sh east
super + alt + h
    resize.sh west
super + alt + n
    resize.sh south
super + alt + e
    resize.sh north
super + alt + l
    resize.sh east
super + ctrl + h
    presel.sh west
super + ctrl + n
    presel.sh south
super + ctrl + e
    presel.sh north
super + ctrl + l
    presel.sh east
#+end_src

WEW that's a lot. Thanks Baskerbae.

-----

Many of the newer wayland window managers have you assign keys individually via a client, mostly in a shape that sort of hails from the i3 config format. I'll cherrypick [[https://github.com/swaywm/sway/blob/4d43f1dd996e61e38d89adf0ad1435dac32e38a5/config.in#L90][sway]]'s, but you can see comparable formats in example configs for [[https://gitlab.com/cardboardwm/cardboard/-/blob/f2ef2ff076ddbbd23994553b8eff131f9bd0207f/README.md][cardboard]], [[https://github.com/ifreund/river/blob/afe1f197aa8f80f5fb0069aeaf851240189f9dcc/example/init][river]], and [[https://github.com/ifreund/river/blob/afe1f197aa8f80f5fb0069aeaf851240189f9dcc/example/init][wayfire]] as well:

#+begin_src conf
bindsym $mod+$left focus left
bindsym $mod+$down focus down
bindsym $mod+$up focus up
bindsym $mod+$right focus right
#+end_src

This snippet comes from the example config, but if you prepend the lines with ~swaymsg~ you get something you can run in a script. In the week or so I gave sway a drive, most of my configuring was done this way -- with a ~swayrc~ file containing ~swaymsg~ client calls -- the prospect of porting my comparably compact sxhkdrc file was annoying though. So, like the lazy programmer I am, I squinted at it a little bit and realized the sxhkd templating format looked a little... /familiar/. It's supremely similar to shell templating!:

#+begin_src sh
$ echo foo{bar,baz}
foobar foobaz

$ echo {,fae}{bar,baz}
bar baz faebar faebaz

$ echo super+{_,shift,alt,ctrl}+{h,n,e,l}
super+_+h super+_+n super+_+e super+_+l super+shift+h super+shift+n super+shift+e super+shift+l super+alt+h super+alt+n super+alt+e super+alt+l super+ctrl+h super+ctrl+n super+ctrl+e super+ctrl+l
#+end_src

Armed with this knowledge, I glued together something terrible for my ~swayrc~ file:

#+begin_src bash
bind() {
    args=("$@")
    for i in $(seq 0 "$(( (${#args[@]} / 2) - 1 ))"); do
	key=$(echo "${args[$i]}" | sed 's/super/Mod4/' )

	val_index=$(( i + (${#args[@]} / 2) ))
	val=${args[$val_index]}

	echo swaymsg bindsym "$key" "$bindprefix$val"
	swaymsg bindsym "$key" "$bindprefix$val"
    done
}

# bind exec
binde() {
    bindprefix='exec ' bind "$@"
}
#+end_src

And then, as long as I escaped the spaces to connect the terms, I could get away with this as my config:

#+begin_src sh
binde super+{,shift+,alt+,ctrl+}{h,n,e,l} \
    {focus,move,resize,presel}.sh\ {west,south,north,east}
#+end_src

Hooray!