Filter key events
 

I remember that once was a thread about a user that wanted TouchCursor in Linux. I liked the idea and thought about implementing it for X, but no-one replied.

Now I am myself getting annoyed with reaching for the cursor keys and I would really like to know how to do this. The problem is that I do more and more work in the command line now, and I would like this to work here, too.

Would this be too hard to implement?

Maybe you should just change the keyboard mapping?

Have a look at /usr/share/X11/xkb.

I don't want to remap keys, I want to make the spacebar a mod key that makes I, J, K and L act like arrow keys.

And I would like it to work without X, too, if that, not extremely hard.

keymaps(5) says:
The only possiblity I see is to get rid of one of the modifiers and define the space key to take its position. Then you can define that space+J=left or similar things. See keymaps(5).
At the moment I do not see an easier solution than creating a custom keymap and load it with loadkeys(1).

So will this work without X?

And will the spacebar still print a space when you press and release it?

I was trying to find some info on keymaps, but can't seem to find anything.

Do you know of any good explanations/tutorials?