Keys

The other keys are in the chapters of what they do, and in the command palette.

With editor.keymap_profile = "vim", every key is Vim's: the modes, motions, operators, text objects and counts, registers and macros, marks with the jump and change lists, search with Vim's patterns, and the command line with ranges, :s, :g, :sort, :set, its history (Up, Down, CTRL-P, CTRL-N) and CTRL-R, and the file and window commands (:w, :e, :sp, :bn, :tabnew, :Ex for the file manager, :Projects); gq and gw format to textwidth, CTRL-W's keys work the panes, ZZ and ZQ close. Some eight hundred key sequences in tests/vim/cases.json are run in Vim itself and in Kalem, and the text and cursor after them must agree; they come from fifteen thousand that were tried against Vim, over tabs, Turkish letters and blank lines. Not there: Vim script and expressions (:let, :exe, \=, CTRL-R ), mappings (:map=, :abbreviate), :help, the :! filter, :a, :i and :c, and the motions over screen lines (g$; in Org gj and gk move by element, as in Doom Emacs). The fold commands zo, zc, za, zM and zR fold Org's headings.

The keys of the Vim plugins Doom Emacs has on are there too, where Vim leaves the key unused: vim-surround's ds(, cs"' and ysiw) (yss the line; a sign such as * puts itself on both sides, Org's and Markdown's emphasis), vim-commentary's gc and gcc with the language's comment markers, and vim-unimpaired's ] SPC and [ SPC (blank lines), ]b and [b (documents), ]w and [w (workspaces), ]d and [d (the changes a plugin marks), ]t and [t (TODO, FIXME and the like). As in Neovim, * and # on a selection search for it. Where Doom changes a key Vim has (s, Y, gt, gx, < in Visual mode), the key is Vim's.

:q closes the pane when the window is split, else the document, as a tab closes: Kalem stays open, an empty document taking the last one's place, and quits from :q only when nothing is left to close (in the terminal, from the last document, as Vim does). :q! closes the document losing its changes and no other's; :qa quits, :qa! quits without saving after asking.

The Word-like Control and Alt keys are off where the Vim layer is on, except, as in Doom Emacs, Alt with the arrows (structure moves, table rows and columns), Control or Alt with Enter, and Ctrl+Space for completion; on macOS, Command keeps the Word-like keys. In Org documents >> and << demote and promote headings and indent list items. Kalem's defaults differ from Vim's where Vim keeps Vi's: autoindent is on, shiftwidth and expandtab are the document's own indentation (four spaces, two, or a tab, as Tab and a closing bracket indent) until set, backspace is indent,eol,start, nrformats is bin,hex and joinspaces is off; :set changes them for the document. editor.vim.leader makes another key the leader, and editor.vim.modes limits Vim keys to some kinds of documents: org, markdown, csv, latex, text and directory.

SPC m holds the keys of the document's kind, as Doom's :lang org, :lang latex and :lang markdown modules have them. The tables come from tests/keys/doom-localleader.toml, checked against the keymap in a document of each kind.

keymap.json in the settings directory changes any key:

[
  // Ctrl+Shift+W sets the tag "work".
  { "keys": "ctrl+shift+w", "command": "org.tags.set",
    "args": { "tags": ["work"] }, "when": "onHeadline" },
  // No Ctrl+B for bold.
  { "keys": "ctrl+b", "command": "-org.emphasis.bold" },
  // Two-key sequences, Emacs style.
  { "keys": "C-c C-t", "command": "org.todo.cycle" },
  // Vim keys: SPC p t lists the project's recent files; no SPC q q.
  { "keys": "leader p t", "command": "project.recentFiles", "when": "vimCommand" },
  { "keys": "leader q q", "command": "-app.quit" }
]

kalem commands lists the command IDs, and the palette finds a command by its ID too. leader stands for the Vim leader. docs/keymaps/emacs.json is a complete keymap with Emacs's Org keys, to copy from.

Every command serves some types of text. The type is the one at the cursor, innermost first: a source block's language (python), latex in a formula, the file's kind (org, markdown, csv or text), a file's language (rust). So Ctrl+B makes bold text in Org and does nothing in a Python block, and Alt+Up moves lines in code but headings, items and rows in Org. A binding can use the type: "when": "textType = python". =kalem commands --type org lists the commands of a type with their scope and keys.

A terminal without the kitty keyboard protocol cannot send some keys: Ctrl+Enter arrives as Enter, Ctrl+Shift+P as Ctrl+P, and Command never arrives. The terminal editor then uses other keys, which the palette and menus show:

Other Control keys such a terminal cannot send become Alt and the same key (Ctrl+Shift+T is Alt+T, Ctrl+1 is Alt+1); a binding in keymap.json can name its own with "terminalKeys": "alt+w". Alt reaches Kalem only when the terminal sends it: in macOS Terminal, set "Use Option as Meta key" (Settings, Profiles, Keyboard); in iTerm2, "Left Option key: Esc+" (Profiles, Keys). Terminals with the kitty keyboard protocol (kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, foot) send every key as it is.

In the terminal editor's palette and prompts, the line edits as in a shell or on Vim's command line: Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E go to its start and end, Ctrl+U and Ctrl+K delete to them, and Ctrl+W deletes the word before the cursor.

Every key of Doom Emacs's leader map, and what it does in Kalem or why it does not yet: Planned names the task that brings it. The table is generated from tests/keys/doom-leader.toml, which the tests check against the Vim keymap. The file manager's keys are in its chapter.