Can't get Flow to insert []{} on a Finnish macOS keyboard setup

[nurpax]

I read through discussions/413 and I tried this with Ghostty tip using both macos-option-as-alt = false and macos-option-as-alt = left, I also tried flipping between

keybind_mode "ignore_alt_text_modifiers"
keybind_mode "normal"

But no matter what I do, I can't seem to get Flow to insert the following keys, that are inserted on a Finnish PC keyboard when I press AltGr+7/8/9/0 ({[]}). I think the chars come through correctly as I see them in the flow --show-input log (attached screenshot), but I guess there's an alt modifier attached to them?

This is probably due to how I use Karabiner to edit my keyboard inputs on macOS. But the mods don't seem to affect any other console applications, Ghostty sees the chars correctly, other TUI apps work, etc.

My flow version is version: v0.6.0-666-g01cbdf85 (built from Git today).

I'd be super happy to provide further information to get this working somehow. I guess at the least, maybe there's a way to add flow keybindings for these. But as all other console apps don't seem to mind my keyboard, maybe there could be something flow could be doing differently too?

[nurpax]

I was able to get this working by removing some existing alt-bindings (IIRC alt-[ and alt-] at least, plus some others) and then adding the following bindings to ~/.config/flow/keys/flow.json:

            ["alt+{", "insert_chars", "{"],
            ["alt+}", "insert_chars", "}"],

It's kind of a hack though.

[neurocyte]

Yes, this is the only known workaround, but ignore_alt_text_modifiers should actually do effectively the same thing.

[nurpax]

Thanks! I couldn't get ignore_alt_text_modifiers to work for this, but it's possible I fumbled something with versions because I had to rebuild Ghostty tip too in order to have the latest fixes.

[neurocyte]

ignore_alt_text_modifiers should do the right thing here.

I finally have access to a macos machine now, so I'll see if I can get ghostty installed and reproduce the issue with a DE keyboard.

[neurocyte]

Btw, this might be related to #487. (although perhaps unlikely)

Could you also compare the output of kitty +kitten show_key -m kitty in Ghostty and Kitty on your machine. Just to check that ghostty is not just encoding something wrong.

[neurocyte]

The shift+alt+8 PRESS { event should definitely be identical in ghostty to kitty. If not there is a ghostty bug here. Or at very least a ghostty setting problem.

[nurpax]

If I'm decoding the escapes correctly, on Kitty the base key is reported as ( (40) but on Ghostty the base key is { (123). That's shown as the "Shifted key:".

[nurpax]

I lost a comment here but just wanted to mentino that I tried Ghostty tip (built a few days ago) too, and the key encoding is the same. I also had some alt key related config settings but these didn't affect it:

macos-option-as-alt = left  # tried also false & removing this line
keybind = alt+left=unbind
keybind = alt+right=unbind

[nurpax]

Just for fun, also tried running in the default macOS Terminal that barely supports anything. That's how kitten showkeys runs there. []{} do work in Flow in this terminal.

[neurocyte]

Just for fun, also tried running in the default macOS Terminal that barely supports anything. That's how kitten showkeys runs there. []{} do work in Flow in this terminal.

Yes, this is not surprising. MacOS Terminal does not support kitty keyboard protocol. Many keybindings will not work there, but plain text input should.