keyhint 0.1.0

Display context-sensitive keyboard shortcuts or other hints on Linux and Windows

keyhint

Display context-sensitive keyboard shortcuts or other hints on Linux and Windows.

Usage

The tool can be started by python -m keyhint or simply keyhint. But as the keyhint displays hints based on the currently active window, you probably want to configure a global hotkey to trigger it on demand.

Based on the process name and window title of the active window, different sets of hints are displayed.

Screenshots of some hints:

Installation

pip install keyhint

Configuration

Look & Behavior

• You can configure colors, font and closing behavior by modifying the file
  <CONFIG_PATH>/keyhint/config.yaml

Hints

• You can also configure the hints to show for different applications by modifying or adding section in the file
  <CONFIG_PATH>/keyhint/hints.yaml

• The hints to display are selected by going through all sections from top to bottom and comparing the value of regex_process with the process name of the active window and the value of regex_title with the title of the active window. The first section, where both values are found, gets displayed.

• Both of those regex_ values are interpreted as case insensitive regular expressions.)

Notes

• The <CONFIG_PATH> can be different from system to system. On Linux it's usually ~/.config, on Windows it should be C:\Users\<YOURNAME>\AppData\Roaming.

• You can reset configuration or hints to the shipped version by deleting the yaml files from the configuration folder.

Tips

Differentiate Websites:

• For showing different browser-hints depending on the current website, you might want to use a browser extension like "Add URL To Window Title" and then configure the sections in hints.yaml to look for the URL in the window title.

Differentiate Multi Platform:

• Sometimes the hints you want to show are the same for e.g. Linux and Windows. In that case, you might want to set e.g. regex_process: firefox.* to match with Firefox (Linux) as well as with Firefox.exe (Windows).

• If you want to show different hints for the same tool depending on the platform, use two sections, one with regex_process: firefox(?!\.exe) (Linux) and one with regex_process: firefox\.exe (Windows).

Contribute

I'm happy about any contribution! Especially I would appreciate submissions to improve the shipped hints. (The current set are the hints I personally use).

Design Principles

• Multi-Platform
  Should work on Linux, Mac (not yet achieved) & Windows.
• Don't run as service
  It shouldn't consume resources in the background, even if this leads to slower start-up time.
• No network connection
  Everything should run locally without any network communication.
• Dependencies
  The fewer dependencies, the better.
• Chain of Responsibility as main design pattern
  See description on refactoring.guru
• Multi-Monitors
  Supports setups with two or more displays

Certification