13 KiB
Kaleidoscope v2.0
Currently at 1.92-beta, in development!
See UPGRADING.md for more detailed instructions about upgrading from earlier versions (even earlier betas). This is just a list of noteworthy changes.
New features
KALEIDOSCOPE_API_VERSION bump
KALEIDOSCOPE_API_VERSION has been bumped to 2 due to the plugin API
changes mentioned below. It does not mean that version two of the API is final,
though. The bump is there so plugins can check it, and make compile-time
decisions based on it. Such as whether to compile for the version one, or for
the version two API.
The API version will remain the same, even if we introduce breaking changes - until a stable release is made from the v2 branch. From that point onwards, the API version will change with further breaking changes.
New device API
A new hardware device API was introduced in November 2019, replacing the old system. It was designed to be more composable, more future proof than the old system. All hardware plugins under Keyboardio control have been updated to use the new APIs.
See UPGRADING.md for more information.
New plugin API
A new plugin API was introduced in May 2018, which replaces the old system. The new system is hopefully easier to use and develop for:
- It does not require one to register / use hooks anymore. Implementing the interface provided by
kaleidoscope::Pluginis all that is required. - The new system has more hook points, and the method names are much more clear now.
Plugins under Keyboardio control have all been updated to use the new API, and they no longer support the older one.
See UPGRADING.md for more information.
Transition to a monorepo
We heard a lot of complaints that while the plugin architecture of Kaleidoscope is great, having so many plugins scattered around in dozens of repositories is a huge barrier of entry for potential contributors, and a significant pain point for end-users to update. For these reasons and more, we merged almost all plugins into the Kaleidoscope repository.
While at first it may seem that this is a move towards a monolithic architecture, rest assured, it is not. The plugin APIs are still a core part of Kaleidoscope, it isn't going anywhere. We merely rearranged the sources, is all. Nothing else changes.
Some headers and names did change, however, see UPGRADING.md for more information.
Bidirectional communication for plugins
The bi-directional communication protocol formerly implemented by Kaleidoscope-Focus has been partially pulled into core, using the new plugin system mentioned above. The new system makes it a lot easier for both end-users and developers to use the feature.
See UPGRADING.md for more information.
Consistent timing
Numerous plugins use timers, most of them directly calling millis(). This has the disadvantage that calls within a main loop cycle will be inconsistent, which makes timing synchronization across plugins hard. The newly introduced Kaleidoscope.millisAtCycleStart() function helps dealing with this issue.
See UPGRADING.md for more information.
USB detach / attach
It is now possible to detach, and re-attach the USB link from/to the host, without resetting the device. The intent of this feature (as implemented by the Kaleidoscope.detachFromHost() and Kaleidoscope.attachToHost() methods) is to allow configuration changes without rebooting.
See the Kaleidoscope-USB-Quirks plugin for a use-case.
Finer stickability controls for OneShot
The OneShot plugin gained finer stickability controls, one can now control whether the double-tap stickiness is enabled on a per-key basis. See UPGRADING.md for more information.
A way to slow down Unicode input
In certain cases we need to delay the unicode input sequence, otherwise the host is unable to process the input properly. For this reason, the Unicode gained an .input_delay() method that lets us do just that. It still defaults to no delay.
Better support for modifiers in the Cycle plugin
The Cycle plugin has much better support for cycling through keys with modifiers applied to them, such as LSHIFT(Key_A). Please see the documentation and the updated example for more information.
More control over when to send reports during Macro playback
There are situations where one would like to disable sending a report after each and every step of a macro, and rather have direct control over when reports are sent. The new WITH_EXPLICIT_REPORT, WITH_IMPLICIT_REPORT and SEND_REPORT steps help with that. Please see the Macros documentation for more information.
LED-ActiveModColor can be asked to not highlight normal modifiers
The plugin was intended to work with OneShot primarily, and that's where it is most useful. To make it less surprising, and more suitable to include it in default-like firmware, we made it possible to ask it not to highlight normal modifiers. Please see the LED-ActiveModColor documentation for more information.
Events now trigger on layer changes
Changing layers now triggers the onLayerChange event - but only if there was real change (thus, calling Layer.on(SOME_LAYER) multiple times in a row will only trigger one event). This event was introduced to help plugins that depend on layer state schedule their work better.
Hyper and Meh keys
To make it easier to create custom shortcuts, that do not interfere with system ones, an old trick is to use many modifiers. To make this easier, Ctrl+Shift+Alt is commonly abbreviated as Meh, while Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Gui is often called Hyper. To support this, we offer the Key_Meh and Key_Hyper aliases, along with MEH(k) and HYPER(k) to go with them.
keymap internals are now a one dimensional array
Historically, Kaleidoscope used the dimensional array keymaps to map between logical key position and hardware key position. keymaps has been replaced with keymaps_linear, which moves the keymap to a simple array. This makes it easier to support new features in Kaleidoscope and simplifies some code
PER_KEY_DATA macros
New PER_KEY_DATA and PER_KEY_DATA_STACKED macros are available (when defined by a hardware implementation). These macros make it easier to build features like KEYMAPS that track some data about each key on a keyboard.
New hardware support
Kaleidoscope has been ported to the following devices:
- Atreus: All known variants of the original Atreus are supported. From the Legacy Teensy variant, through the pre-2016 PCB with an A* MCU, the post-2016 PCB, and FalbaTech's handwired one too. Apart from the legacy Teensy variant, the other support both the A* or a Teensy as an MCU.
- ErgoDox: Originally developed to support the ErgoDox EZ, but all other compatible hardware is supported, such as the original ErgoDox and anything else wired like it, like some Dactyls.
- Planck: AVR-based Plancks, and anything else wired similarly should be supported, as long as they use a Teensy.
- Splitography: Initial support for the Splitography Steno keyboard.
For more information, please see the hardware plugins' documentation.
To make it easier to port Kaleidoscope, we introduced the ATMegaKeyboard base class. For any board that's based on the ATMega MCU and a simple matrix, this might be a good foundation to develop the hardware plugin upon.
New plugins
DynamicMacros
The DynamicMacros plugin provides a way to use and update macros via the Focus API, through Chrysalis.
IdleLEDs
The IdleLEDs plugin is a simple, yet, useful one: it will turn the keyboard LEDs off after a period of inactivity, and back on upon the next key event.
LEDActiveLayerColor
The [LEDActiveLayerColor][doc/plugin/LEDActiveLayerColor.md] plugin makes it possible to set the color of all LEDs to the same color, depending on which layer is active topmost.
LED-Wavepool
We integrated the LEDWavepool plugin by ToyKeeper, with a few updates and new features added.
Turbo
The Turbo plugin provides a way to send keystrokes in very quick succession while holding down a key.
WinKeyToggle
The WinKeyToggle plugin assists with toggling the Windows key on and off - a little something for those of us who game under Windows and are tired of accidentally popping up the start menu.
FirmwareDump
The FirmwareDump plugin makes it possible to dump one's firmware over Focus.
Breaking changes
The NumPad plugin no longer toggles NumLock
The NumPad plugin used to toggle NumLock when switching to the NumPad layer. This caused issues on OSX where NumLock is interpreted as Clear. For this reason, the plugin no longer does this. As a consequence, everyone's encouraged to update their keymap so that the numpad layer uses normal number keys instead of the keypad numbers. See Model01-Firmware#79 for an example about how to do this.
The RxCy macros and peeking into the keyswitch state
The RxCy macros changed from being indexes into a per-hand bitmap to being an index across the whole keyboard. This mostly affected the MagicCombo plugin.
Please see the relevant upgrade notes for more information.
The Redial plugin had a breaking API change
The Redial plugin was simplified, one no longer needs to define Key_Redial on their own, the plugin defines it itself. See the upgrade notes for more information about how to upgrade.
Color palette storage has changed
The LED-Palette-Theme had to be changed to store the palette colors in reverse. This change had to be made in order to not default to a bright white palette, that would draw so much power that most operating systems would disconnect the keyboard due to excessive power usage. With inverting the colors, we now default to a black palette instead. This sadly breaks existing palettes, and you will have to re-set the colors.
We also changed when we reserve space for the palette in EEPROM: we used to do it as soon as possible, but that made it impossible to go from a firmware that does not use the plugin to one that does, and still have a compatible EEPROM layout. We now reserve space as late as possible. This breaks existing EEPROM layouts however.
EEPROM-Keymap changed Focus commands
The EEPROMKeymap plugin was changed to treat built-in (default) and EEPROM-stored (custom) layers separately, because that's less surprising, and easier to work with from Chrysalis. The old keymap.map and keymap.roLayers commands are gone, the new keymap.default and keymap.custom commands should be used instead.
EEPROMSettings' version() setter has been deprecated
We're repurposing the version setting: instead of it being something end-users
can set, we'll be using it internally to track changes made to
EEPROMSettings itself, with the goal of
allowing external tools to aid in migrations. The setting wasn't widely used -
if at all -, which is why we chose to repurpose it instead of adding a new
field.
Bugfixes
We fixed way too many issues to list here, so we're going to narrow it down to the most important, most visible ones.
Support for BIOSes, EFI, login prompts, etc
Keyboards report keys pressed to the host via either of two protocols: the boot protocol, or the report protocol. The boot protocol is the simpler, and it is what older BIOSes, EFI, and certain OS login prompts (or hard disk password prompts and the like) require. Until recently, the firmware wasn't able to provide this protocol, only the more advanced report one, which is required for N-key roll-over.
We now support the boot protocol, and on operating systems that fully conform to the USB specification, this works automatically. For all others, one can implement a way to force one mode or the other. See the factory firmware for an example how to achieve this.