I received my Kinesis Advantage 2 on August 16, 2106. One of the key reasons I upgraded, aside from escaping the quirks of the previous quarter-century-old architecture, was to be able to maintain layouts as plaintext files on the internal drive.
Unfortunately, at the time I received the keyboard, the official manual had yet to be posted, and the quickstart guide didn't explain any of the "power user" features!
So, I began assembling some notes based on a combination of experiments and things Kinesis posted to social media. This is the result.
The manual has since been posted, but a few things remain undocumented, and it leaves something to be desired if you're just after a quick reference. So, this document remains, and I'll probably expand and improve it over time.
To get at the on-board drive, you need to enter power user mode, and then "mount" the drive.
Power user mode: Program+Shift+Esc (lights will flash a couple times)
Mount drive: Program+Shift+F1
This presents a 2MB FAT12 (!) filesystem, so pretty much any OS that supports USB drives will be read/write capable on it.
At least on a Mac, if you try to safely eject the drive, it will, curiously, remount. As far as I can tell, to do it "safely", you have to eject and then quickly hit Program+Shift+F1. If you just hit the key combo, MacOS whines about unsafe removal. This all makes me a bit nervous about possible filesystem corruption down the line.
Keyboard layouts are stored in the folder called "active". You'll find "dvorak.txt" and "qwerty.txt". You can create additional layouts by naming them X_dvorak.txt or X_qwerty.txt where "X" is any number or letter. You then switch between the layouts with Program+X. So, if you create a 2_dvorak.txt, you can switch to it with Program+2. To switch to the "base" layout (that is, dvorak.txt or qwerty.txt), you just hit Program+F3 (qwerty) or Program+F4 (dvorak), just like you were switching to that mode to begin with.
NOTE: You have to hit the original, physical key corresponding to the letter or number. So if you name a file g_dvorak.txt, You have to hit the original QWERTY "g" key -- Dvorak "i", even if you're already in dvorak mode. Probably less confusing to just stick to numbers.
The "language" of the layout files is simple yet arcane. It's [physicalkey]>[logicalkey]. The manual provides a list of tokens in the appendix (chapter 13, page 32 of the current version). There appear to be some "hidden" tokens (notably f14, which I've been using since I got the keyboard, is not listed). Additional tokens are also apparently coming in future firmware updates.
Below is a sample of what I have in my dvorak layout thus far, mostly created through the on-board remapping mechanism, though [scroll]>[f14] was a manual edit (that worked!).
[caps]>[rctrl]
[scroll]>[f14]
[intl-\]>[lalt]
[kp=]>[kp=mac]
[hyphen]>[\]
[lalt]>[rwin]
[lctrl]>[lalt]
[kp-lctrl]>[kp-lwin]
[rctrl]>[rwin]
[kp-rctrl]>[kp-rwin]
[\]>[hyphen]
[rwin]>[rctrl]
[kp-rwin]>[kp-rctrl]
Turns out, you can specify decimal HID keycodes in the layout files!
I'm not sure of the exact rules, but I've been able to do, for example:
[A]>[047]
And "A" then types [. An initial attempt to just use [47] failed, I suspect it either must be at least 3 digits or zero-prefixed.
A list of specified USB HID codes is available in a PDF on usb.org. Chapter 10, starting on page 53.
state.txt appears to contain various settings, HOWEVER, I have not yet been able to get manual changes to this file to take effect, even by unplugging the keyboard and plugging it back in, so it appears that it may be effectively read-only.
The curiously-named do_not_edit.txt is empty and has an unknown function.
version.txt displays the model name and firmware version. I'm guessing this is effectively read-only like state.txt.
I do some unusual things with my modifier keys. First of all, I've always (long before I used an Advantage) remapped capslock to ctrl. I'm also not a fan of the default Mac modifier key layout on Advantage keyboards. So, I remap them (the "\|"/"insert" key (bottom left ring finger key) becomes an alt/option, then going left-to-right on the thumb modifiers, I do alt/option, cmd, ctrl, cmd).
However, trying to remap them can give surprising results. Specifically, you may find that when you thought you mapped a key to ctrl, you actually mapped it to cmd, or vice-versa (I haven't documented exactly what happens, mostly I was happy to finally get it right).
I believe this just has to do with the default layout that's active in remapping mode. It's actually the windows or PC modifier key layout, and you have to transpose. Someday I may have the patience to actually stop and think about what's happening. I recall having the same difficulty when I got my Advantage Pro.
Adv2Notes © 2016 by Nicholas Knight (https://github.com/nicholasknight/adv2keyboard)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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